


The Creeps

by Chianine



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Crime, Friendship, Gen, Grooming, Humor, M/M, Sexual Abuse, hard-boiled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:50:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chianine/pseuds/Chianine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack likes working with Commander Rumlow. Jack likes working with the Soldier. Jack does <i>not</i> like working with both Commander Rumlow and the Soldier at the same time.</p><p> </p><p>Trigger warnings: descriptions of situations that closely resemble real-life sexual abuse, homophobic language, gratuitous use of strong language, emotional manipulation, internalized homophobia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Period of Operation: 2011-2012  
December 13, 2011**

Rollins lets out a heavy sigh. In the time Brock had been in the convenience store (taking a piss, supposedly) he had filled the tank and squee-geed the windshield and wasted another five minutes in the car waiting for his ass. He adjusted the rear-view mirror so he could see the Soldier in the back seat without craning his neck. The Soldier looked up immediately.

“How ya doin' back there?”

The Soldier looked lost. “I'm not doing anything.”

Rollins rolled his eyes. “I swear to God, between the two of you...”

Rumlow came out the front door of the Cum-n-Go and hopped in the backseat.

“What?” Rollins said into the rear-view mirror. “You're riding in the back? What is this – a fuckin' taxi?”

“I can sit wherever I want! Why, are you afraid you'll get lonely?”

“Whatever, Christ...” Rollins started the engine and pulled out onto the highway, listening to the sounds of chip bags crumpling and candy wrappers being torn open. There was definitely more than one mouth chewing food back there.

“Brock – you're not giving him any of that shit, are you?” Commander or not, Rumlow was usually the one that needed to be reminded what the rules were, on any mission.

“The guy's been busting his ass the last two days. Don't you think he deserves some Funions and a Snickers?”

Rollins took a glance in the mirror and sure enough, the Soldier was chewing and staring back with a guilty look on his face. “You know he's not supposed to have that! He hasn't had regular food in him for the last fifty years!”

“Hey,” Brock started, leaning forward, “let's not forget who the alpha-dog in this Lincoln is. And it's not like this is the first Snickers bar the man's ever had. Isn't that right, doll face?”

“It's not the first Snickers bar I've ever had.”

“See, and he even remembers.”

“Look, I don't care who the alpha-dog of this Lincoln Town Car is, if he shits or pukes all over the backseat I'm not the one cleaning it.”

“Relax. I'm surprised you're even able to drive with that giant stick up your ass.”

See, this was the problem. Although the guidelines and restrictions for use of the asset were clear, no one except Brock was stupid enough to venture outside of them. And then Jack had to lie and cover for Brock during debriefing and listen to him pull the “who's the boss” card every time Jack suggested that they think twice about rough-housing with him, taking him to a bar, teaching him dirty words, or sitting him down in front of a horror movie. Now they're adding candy to the bill.

It was twilight and Jack could barely make him out when he took another glance in the mirror to see how well the Soldier was taking the candy thing. Jack wouldn't be surprised if he didn't want the candy (no one loved rules more than that fucker did) but was eating it only because his Commander was telling him to. He watched the Soldier open wide and turn to Brock, who then used two fingers to put something in his mouth, _all the way inside his mouth,_ then use the same hand to close it and give him a loving good-boy pat on the cheek.

Needless to say, Jack absolutely could not believe what he was seeing. He kept glancing in the mirror to see if it would happen again. The Soldier swallowed, and then opened his mouth again, ready to be fed. This time Brock teased him with the bite, forcing him to chase it with his mouth before letting the Soldier grab his wrist and take it. Brock's fingers disappeared inside the Soldier's mouth as he sucked the candy from between them, and apparently this was just fine and dandy because he got a scratch on the head for it.

“Jesus Christ, Brock! What's going on back there? Wha - are you _feeding_ him? Like, _by hand?_ ”

“Yeah, so?”

Jack could not believe he was being asked to explain why that was fucking weird. “Can't he feed himself?”

“You're the one having a hissy fit about messes in the car so I thought I would give him a hand.”

“Whatever, bro. Just, maybe you should look into getting a dog or a cat or something...”

“Hey, fuck you, asshole!” That wasn't Brock's fucking-around voice. That was his ready to-to-start-a-fight-even-with-the-person-driving-the-car-he's-sitting-in voice. “Maybe if you keep your eyes on the road instead of the rear-view mirror we might get to the lab without dying in a fucking car crash first!”

Jack knew better than to respond. He did as directed even though every eating/wrapper sound coming from the backseat gave him the heebie-jeebies.

When a steady stream of crunches started issuing from behind his ear, Jack stole another quick glance in the mirror. The Soldier was sitting there, straight as a board, munching slowly on a bag of Funions. Brock was next to him, staring at him, his wrist laying on the asset's shoulder as he ran his fingers through his hair and over his neck and the shell of his ear.

What... the _fuck._

* * *

**Period of Operation: 2012-2013**

Jack loved hearing spooky gossip about the Winter Soldier. Romanov claimed he shot her and she was right. Other people claimed to have seen him on deep cover assignments and Jack knew that was all bullshit. No one knew Hydra was still a thing, so people had cooked up theories about him working for everything from the Soviets (true) to the North Koreans (false) to Donald Trump (true) and the Illuminati (that shit didn't even exist). Other hilarious theories were abound as to why he was called the Winter Soldier. Some people with half a brain had already worked out that he must go in and out of cryo, but most people attributed it to his icy, ruthless techniques. These people had never seen him snacking on a bag of Funions or dealt with him pissing himself because he was too scared to ask to go to a bathroom.

The real reason he was called the Winter Soldier was simply and boringly because he was operational during the months of October through January. Sometime in October Jack and Brock would start being called in by Pierce to discuss missions handling the Soldier. Brock volunteered for every god damned one of them.

On Saturday they were setting up a cancer researcher by bloodying his house and tossing a dead rent boy in his bed. Jack could handle political assassinations but this shit made him sick. Pierce only needed one handler and Jack was glad when Brock jumped on it - especially after Pierce informed them that it would be an overnight thing and someone would have to stay in a hotel with the Soldier. Even Pierce seemed alarmed by Brock's enthusiasm.

* * *

After the cancer researcher business, the asset had another assignment taking care of some economics professor in Rio de Janeiro. Jack couldn't see why a college teacher would be so important but Pierce wasn't above sending his Soldier to murder someone just because he'd gotten into an argument with them at a cocktail party. 

It was going to be about five days on assignment. Brock could barely sit still he was so eager.

“Okay,” Pierce answered, ready to sign Brock up in his terrorism log, then stopped. “Actually that's not going to work. Captain Rogers,” Pierce raised his eyebrows and sighed, “has requested that you instruct a hand-to-hand Strike training on the fourteenth. He's apparently quite impressed with your skill. He especially likes your creative use of the stun baton. I've promised you would be happy to oblige.”

Brock looked like a kid who had been told that Christmas was canceled. “A fucking training? Are you kidding me?”

Pierce gave Brock _the look_ and Brock settled himself. “Yes, Sir.”

“So, Rollins, the assignment goes to you. Don't forget your sunscreen!”

Brock shot him a venomous look and then refused to speak to him for the duration of the Soldier's operational period. Brock and Jack weren't offered any more handling assignments that year since they were all large-scale operations in the Middle East and Pierce liked to send his non-Strike disposable handlers for those. 

Jack didn't care. He was just glad to get through the holiday season without having to spend three-and-a-half days in the Lincoln with Chester the Molester and Fifi.


	2. Chapter 2

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014  
October 10, 2013**

October was back before could Jack could say “fuck, not again” and immediately there was an emergency mission over a Hydra agent whose conscience had got the better of him and thought you could just quit the organization the way most people quit their job at Walmart. Not so. Of course he had promised never to speak a word to anyone about his time with Hydra but only an idiot would think they were going to do anything besides hunt his ass down and kill him.

The Soldier had already been brought out of cryo but they didn't have seventy-two hours to let him defrost normally, so Jack had been hearing some pretty hilarious stories about the techs using everything from electric blankets to hairdryers to makeshift saunas trying to speed the process up. He got to the lab at eight the night they were to take the Soldier on assignment, hoping to see some of the defrosting circus. Instead he found the entire tech crew in the meeting room watching Rocky Horror Picture Shit.

“You homos already thinking about costume ideas or what?”

The only response he got was a few eye rolls.

“No I'm fucking serious. We got a job to do and you bozos are having movie night. Where's the Soldier?”

“He's in the lab.” He got an answer from someone who didn't even look away from the screen. “Rumlow's rubbing him down and getting him suited up.”

“Rubbing him down?” Jesus.

“Yeah his muscles are still tight from accelerated defrosting so he's kinda stiff.”

“Someone wanna tell me why the commander is doing _your_ job?”

“He _wanted_ to. He told us to take a break.”

 

Jack had mostly managed to convince himself that what he saw in the rear-view mirror two years ago was due to sleep deprivation, and Brock's pouting last year over the Rio assignment was because anyone would rather spend five days on a sun and liquor-drenched vacation pretending to babysit the asset instead of playing paddy-cake with Captain fucking America.

His suspicions were back the moment he was told that Rumlow had sent the techs away so he could give the Soldier a “rub down.” In private.

He walked down the hall to the room the Soldier was prepped in, consciously trying to keep his steps from echoing. Outside the swinging doors, he wondered if he really wanted to see what he was almost positive he was about to see. Would it be easier to go on working with Rumlow if he only _wondered_ instead of _witnessed?_ Probably. But that shitty part of human nature that makes you want to catch your fellow humans at their worst was driving him forward. He pushed the door open silently and stood in the darkened half of the lab. The light was on in the next room, and through the open door he could hear voices, soft ones. He recognized immediately the sound of the Soldier whining, sounding like he always did when he got injections or repairs. The funny thing was that it was rhythmic, like something was being done to him repeatedly and in quick succession. 

_Holy Christ._

Jack stepped silently across the room and got as close to the doorway as possible without standing in it. Someone was shushing him and the whining died down. It was replaced by sniveling, and underneath the snivels Jack could here hoarse whispering, the creepy furtive kind that people only use when they're fucking. And it was definitely Brock. 

_This is so fucked._

Jack could feel his face turning red. He thought of leaving, or at least flipping on the lights and making enough noise to give Brock some warning, but he absolutely had to see what was going on in there with his own eyes. Fucking _had_ to.

He slipped past the doorway and his view was still obscured by a shelf, but he could see enough to know that this shit was bad. The asset was naked and face-down on the slab, and Brock was leaning over him, one arm wrapped around him and his other hand right in his ass. That really should have been enough, but Jack kept creeping closer, passing the shelf to get a full view. He could make out what Brock was saying now, and it was the exact same lovey-dovey shit he told the Soldier when they had to calm him down for medical procedures, just mixed together with throaty _fuck yeahs_ and grunts and moans and other disgusting horny noises he didn't really want to hear coming from anyone. Especially Brock.

Jack was not only fully exposed, he was probably in Brock's peripheral view. But being too busy trying to juggle savage finger-fucking, ass and back biting, and reminding the Soldier to keep quiet, all while thoroughly enjoying himself, Brock still didn't notice Jack when he was standing three feet away from him. Either Brock gave absolutely zero fucks about getting caught, or he had just made the biggest tactical error of his career.

 _“BROCK! What the FUCK!”_ Jack's voice echoed throughout the lab, stinging even his own eardrum. 

Brock practically sprung off the Soldier and flew back into a shelf, medical equipment and tools clanging as they fell to the floor along with him. 

_“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”_

The Soldier immediately sat up, equally frightened by Jack's hollering, and was now holding and rocking himself. Jack threw a nearby blanket over him.

Brock, on the floor, was holding a hand in front of himself, shielding himself like Jack was going to kick his ass or something. He was shaking, looking guilty as hell, and Jack just gaped back at him, still not believing this shit.

“Jesus,” Brock got to his feet. “You scared the fucking shit out of me. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“What the – wha -? _We have a mission! What the fuck are you doing?_ ”

“He doesn't need two handlers tonight.” Brock ignored the more important question, and Jack couldn't help thinking that yes, clearly he did need two handlers – one to handle him and another to keep his handler from _actually fucking handling him._

“I said, what the fuck were you doing to him? And don't give me some “it's not what it looks like” shit because -”

“Wait, what? What the fuck is going on in your dirty mind? I was prepping him!”

“ _Prepping_ him? Prepping him for WHAT?” Jack stepped forward and lifted the Soldier's chin. “Look at him, bro. He's fucking crying!”

Brock shrugged and assumed his usual cocky attitude. “Look, I don't know what you think you saw, but -”

“- dude, I've been in here for quite a -”

“- whatever you thought you might have seen -”

“- don't try to bullshit me -”

“- it's not not what it -”

“ _Brock!_ Don't even fucking _say_ it! It's not what it looks like?” Jack stepped forward and roughly grabbed Brock by the wrist, lifting his hand close enough to his face to catch the undeniable scent of ass. “So it's not what it smells like either?”

Brock yanked his arm away.

Jack looked at the man he had once sort of considered his only friend. “Just go clean yourself up and I'll get him dressed. We'll be in the car.”

 

Jack and the Soldier waited a good ten minutes in the Lincoln for Brock, who was presumably blowing off some steam after his exciting adventure with the Soldier's asshole.

The Soldier himself was in the backseat, tinkering with his weapons like they weren't already in top condition. 

“Hey,” Jack said into the mirror.

The Soldier looked up.

“You wanna come sit up here?”

“That's... the commander's seat.”

“Fuck him. What if he tries getting in the back with you? Do you wanna risk having to sit with him, or do you wanna come up here?”

“...”

“You better make up your mind before he comes out...”

Jack heard the car door open and watched the Soldier walk around the Lincoln. He was in the front seat only a few seconds before Brock appeared in the parking garage. 

The Soldier looked at Jack fearfully.

“Don't worry. You stay right where you are. I'll handle this shit.”

Jack was poised for another confrontation. As soon as Brock opened the Soldier's door, Jack was shouting, “Not a _god_ damned word, Brock! Get in the back!”

Brock slammed the door so hard the Lincoln rocked a little, and then the same thing happened when he got in the back and slammed that door, too.

“Let's do this shit. I'm not trying to spend my entire night with you two faggots.” He kicked the back of the Soldier's seat. “Pull up, shithead.”

The Soldier bent over and obeyed immediately, dragging his seat so far up that his knees were resting on the dashboard.

Needless to say, things were pretty quiet in the Lincoln that night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
November 3-4, 2013**

 

Turned out that the Hydra traitor they murdered in October had indeed managed to pass some coded intel to a brother-in-law who was now hiding out in Canada. The good news was they knew who and where he was and everyone was fairly confident that he was too stupid to break the code himself, so after staking out his house and communication lines long enough to be sure he hadn't contacted anyone else, they could just torture him for any extra information, execute him, and be pretty sure the leak was contained. The bad news was that Jack was going to be stuck in a mountain cabin with Brock and the Soldier for a month.

The Soldier had been performing at the top of his game so no one had given him a wipe since the finger-fucking episode, which he presumably still remembered. It was possible though, that he considered it nothing more than a medical procedure or pain endurance training of some kind. Brock and Jack hadn't exactly been on speaking terms for the last month and when they met at the lab to pick up the asset and hop in their beloved Lincoln Town Car, their first words were not pleasant.

“What the fuck is that?” Jack was referring to the plush teddy bear Brock had been playfully rubbing in the Soldier's face.

“It's for him,” Brock answered, then dropped it in the Soldier's lap.

“Why?”

“Why not? I'm a nice guy.”

Jack knew it. This was either an apology gift, or a grooming move. Probably both. Whatever it was, it was working. The Soldier was open-mouthed, turning the mysterious object over in his hands and petting its soft fur like the thing could feel it. Jack reached his arm into the back seat.

“Lemme see that thing.”

The Soldier clutched it protectively to his chest.

“Awww, he _likes_ it!” Fucking Brock.

Jack shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He hadn't been in the car with them for two minutes and he already wanted to kill them both.

“Brock, tell him to hand me the bear.”

“Give it to him, buddy. I promise you'll get it back.”

God, how Jack wanted to tear that thing limb from limb just to make a liar out of Brock. “If you wanna buy presents for him, get him a new holster, or a block of Semtex. Not fucking teddy bears.”

Jack looked at the thing. It was a dark brown bear with blue glass eyes, a blue canvas jacket, and a very detailed Springfield M1903 strapped to its back. He felt a chill. He noticed the collector's tag pinned to its jacket and heard Brock start laughing as soon as he began reading it.

“You're fucking sick, Brock.” 

“Come on, bro. It's funny.”

“You're not gonna think it's funny when he snaps and murders you in your sleep.” The Soldier was already reaching for it over the seat, so Jack could see that he was going to have to give it back. He did, however, remove the tag first.

“You know, I almost got both. They come cheaper that way.”

“Just make sure you get it away from him before we bring him back to the lab.”

They had to drive outside of DC to the airstrip Hydra used, where they boarded a private jet headed for Ottawa. The Soldier spent the flight curled-up around his bear on the floor of the plane, sleeping. Brock spent the trip watching the Soldier sleep like a fucking creep, and Jack spent it watching Brock, wondering what went wrong in his childhood.

At some point Jack went to the bathroom and when he came out Brock was crouching beside the Soldier, petting his sleeping head.

 _“Brock!”_ Jack whispered.

“What?” He went right on a-petting.

“Are you gonna be able to keep your hands to yourself for an entire month?”

Brock narrowed his eyes. “Fuck off.” At least he got up and went back to his seat.

Jack sat next to him. “I'm serious, bro. What's goin' on with you?”

“...”

“I mean, do you just get off on how dangerous he is, or do you really have an actual thing for him?”

That got a reaction. “You callin' me a fag?”

Jack couldn't believe Brock was worried about the word _fag_ when words like _pervert_ or even _rapist_ seemed more appropriate. “I'm not callin' you _shit_ , I'm just gonna remind you of what happened in '64 and '81 – I mean, you've read his fucking file, and you know that no one knows what set him off because no one was left alive -”

“Oh, Christ, Rollins -”

“Just a little food for thought. There are rumors that they were using him, y'know, _recreationally._ ”

They were both quiet for a while, Brock going back to staring at the Soldier again, and Jack doing his very best not to keep going with the subject. But from the way Brock was gazing at the asset, the asshole was clearly not getting it, and Jack wasn't going to be the victim of some wild slaughter after Brock finally caused the Soldier's mind to break.

Jack tried to put on his best impression of understanding friend.“Brock, you realize he has the mind of a child, right?”

Brock shook his head in disgust. “Go fuck yourself...”

“Combine that with the knowledge that it took them three days to put all the bodies back together in '81-”

“Don't you have a fuckin' book to read -”

“- and that should be enough to make even an idiot like you realize that he's not something you wanna fuck with. I'll say one last thing before I shut up - if you do something that sends that motherfucker over the edge and I end up getting my head ripped off, so help me god, Brock, I will spend eternity chasing you through the pit of hell with an axe, hacking you to pieces over and over and -”

“Yeah, okay, fuckface, I get the picture!”

“Good.”

 

When they got to Ottawa, there was a 2010 midnight blue Lincoln Town Car Piece-of-Shit Special Edition, exactly like the one they drove in DC, waiting for them. Whether this was a cosmic joke or just Pierce's sense of humor was anyone's guess. This one, at least, didn't have the rank odor of armpits and McDonald's trash can. Stale cigarette smoke and burnt hair weren't exactly an improvement, but the change was appreciated.

Brock threw Jack the keys as they approached the doppelganger Lincoln.

“What the fuck?” Jack looked at the thing in his hands like it was a dead rat. “I'm not driving. I need to get some sleep.”

“So do I.”

Then the staring contest began, the unspoken animosity between them palpable even to the Soldier, who dropped his eyes instead of staring Jack down like he used to whenever Jack questioned the commander. 

“Fine,” Jack said, and held the keys out the Soldier. “Let him drive. He got plenty of sleep.”

The Soldier took the keys and began walking around to the driver's side.

“Are you fuckin' nuts? What if we get pulled over?”

“We do what we always do when we're with him - kill the cop.” Jack began walking to the front passenger's door, but Brock grabbed his arm.

“ _You_ don't tell him what to do, got it?” he gritted into Jack's ear.

“I just did.”

 

The best part of catching Brock with the Soldier was that it pretty much nixed most of the alpha-dog bullshit. Jack wasn't going to blackmail him and Brock knew that, (Jack's personal policy of total discretion was one of the things that made him so valuable to Pierce) but whenever Brock got out of hand Jack knew just the thing to say to put him in his place. On the last Strike mission, Brock was being his usual dickhead self, (challenging everything Rogers said and making shit awkward for everyone else) when Jack decided to tell a particularly tacky joke about a child molester getting caught in the act. He saw Brock glaring at him and winked back. _Yeah, that was for you, motherfucker._ Brock shut up after that.

While they were warming up the Lincoln and assimilating themselves to its alien stink, the Soldier was trying to situate the bear between his legs. As much as he hated the bear, Jack couldn't help laughing at this. Brock stuck his head over the seat and got a kick out of it, too. The Soldier stared back at them blankly.

“Are you sure you're gonna be able to drive like that, bro?” Jack asked.

The Soldier tested the pedals and seemed unsure.

“Why don't you let him sit next to you. I'm sure _he'll_ be more comfortable, at least. He looks like he's gonna suffocate crammed in their with your nuts.”

“He'll fall.”

From the backseat Brock offered a suggestion that was as ridiculous as it was ingenious. “You could buckle him in the middle seat. The Piece-of-Shit Special Edition comes with an extra seat belt up front. Just for teddy bears.”

The Soldier pulled the bear out from between his legs and waited for Jack to get the middle seat belt ready. They strapped the thing in tight and the Soldier seemed satisfied. Brock put his head over the seat to get another good laugh.

“What's your bear's name, Soldier?” Brock asked.

“Brock -” Jack warned, then got a hard punch in the shoulder.

“C'mon. You love him so much, tell us what his name is.”

The Soldier stared at the steering wheel, gripping it in his hands. His lips parted slightly but nothing came out. 

“He doesn't have a name, does he?” Brock tilted his head forward to see the the Soldier's face.

“No. He doesn't have a name.”

“Just like you, right?” Brock said, and Jack could swear he saw the fucker's eyes twinkle, they actually twinkled, he was so pleased with his cruel game. 

“Yeah, like me.” The Soldier confirmed before looking down at his precious companion. 

Satisfied, Brock flopped back into his seat. Which was good, because Jack was about to punch him in his idiot face.

 

Jack and Brock both passed out within minutes, but were jarred awake when the Soldier turned off the highway into a dirt pull-out and the Lincoln started bouncing violently. 

“What are we doing?” Jack asked while the Soldier did a three-point turn and backed the into a hidden spot between the trees.

“Concealing the vehicle from the road,” he said, turning off the engine.

“Why?”

“So that we are not detected while we wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“The break of dawn.”

“Fucking _why_?!” Brock finally chimed in. Him and Brock shared a frustration with the Soldier's absolutely on-point answers. Sometimes you had to ask him twelve questions just to figure out what was going on in his mind.

“It's eleven pm now,” the Soldier explained. “The road passes the target's residence. If he is awake, he might see the headlights. He is bound to be especially alert to anything around him. If we pass his residence at dawn, approximately four twenty-five am, I will be able to steer the vehicle without the use of headlights and we will be unseen.”

Brock groaned but did not argue. No one argued with the Soldier's mission plans because they were always right. The few times his suggestions had been ignored agents had been killed or the mission failed. The Soldier wasn't human though, so he didn't understand that waiting on the side of the road for five-and-a-half hours in the freezing Canadian wilderness with no heat was a fucking pain in the ass.

Brock and Jack tried to sleep but it was impossible. The three of them just sat there listening to each other shiver. The Soldier sat still with his bear in his lap, staring out the windshield. When he finally buckled the bear back in and started the engine, Jack said a prayer of thanks to a god he knew didn't listen to him anymore.

Jack couldn't see shit; as far as he could tell it was still night outside. The Soldier's enhanced vision could handle it, but going fifty miles-an-hour down a road in total darkness is still unnerving.

At some point the Soldier said, “We're passing the target's location now, to the west.”

Both passengers burst out laughing. The Soldier had no idea how meaningless this observation was to two people who couldn't even see the trees less than four feet from the car.

Another half-mile up the road the Soldier turned and his handlers shouted until they realized that he wasn't plowing them into the woods. Instead everyone in the Lincoln was treated to a dirt road so poorly maintained that their heads hit the roof at least three times (the bear was the only one of them wearing a seat belt) before they pulled up to the dilapidated barn next to the equally dilapidated cabin. The Soldier jumped out and forced the barn doors open, then went inside and made a lot of noise, probably throwing shit out of the way so they could hide the Lincoln in there. He got back in the driver's seat and pulled forward, scraping the passenger's side of the car hard against god knows what.

“I miscalculated,” he said fearfully.

His handlers laughed. No one was going to get pissed about him fucking up the Lincoln's paint job.

The cabin was a filthy mess. It was freezing cold, too, and the Soldier immediately reminded them that the fireplace was not to be used under any circumstance. There was one room, and a bathroom with no door on it. With no way to get away from each other, Jack knew he and Brock were going to get into a fistfight at some point.

They were a half-mile from their target, and the Soldier's plan was to surveil his residence in shifts until they could predict an opportunity to fit his house with proper electronic surveillance. This meant laying in the snow with binoculars and a sniper rifle everyday for eight hours and radioing reports back to the two assholes that were still at the cabin. Hopefully this dipshit they were spying on would be making a grocery run soon.

After unloading all their shit like a bellboy the Soldier was ready to scout surveillance positions. Brock was too busy going through the cabinets looking for booze to notice the asset stripping naked to get into his white camouflage. When Brock finally (unfortunately) located a half-empty handle of Heaven Hill and turned around, he whistled.

“Bet you wish you had a body like that!” Brock said, pointing at his naked ass.

“I don't know, I'm not looking at him.”

The Soldier left, leaving Jack with nothing to do but man the radio and watch Brock get drunk at six o' clock in the morning. Luckily he radioed within an hour to say he had found the ideal location so someone could take the first shift. This would obviously be Jack, since Brock was already shitfaced.

He used the GPS to find the Soldier, who sure enough had found a great spot on a high ridge that had a full view of the house. The genius inside had huge uncurtained windows and for a second Jack wondered if this was a set up and the guy wanted to be watched. 

“What's he been doin' in there?” Jack asked as he got behind the binoculars. They were atop a tripod and pointed right at the fucker's desk. Jack could see him, his face glowing from the light of his computer screen. 

“Working,” the Soldier answered.

“Working on what?”

“Learning our secrets.”

Jack snorted. “Right? Stupid question, huh?”

“Yes, it is.”

Jack looked curiously at the Soldier's straight face. Sometimes on missions, especially ones that he was planning, the asset got an attitude. It was sort of cute.

As he was gathering himself to head back to the cabin, Jack realized for the first time that the Soldier was going to be alone with a very drunk Brock for the next seven hours.

“Hey,” Jack said, “make sure you stay on the radio. I'm gonna call in every twenty minutes.”

“Why so frequently?”

“Because... just because.” Jack hoped an interruption from him every twenty minutes would keep Brock from getting in a romantic mood.

Jack watched the target bite his fingernails, pace the floor, make a sandwich, and stare at a computer screen until noon, his calls being answered promptly until then. He made three attempts, imagining what the hell could be going on at the cabin, before Brock got on and chewed his ass out.

“Why the fuck are calling in every ten minutes? We don't need to hear about this asshole's lunch. Over.”

“It's every twenty minutes and I'm just being thorough. We're supposed to be tracking his routines, remember? Over.”

“Well stop. Don't call in unless you see something fucking significant. You're wasting batteries. Over and out.”

Jack laid there in the snow until two, when Brock came stumbling over, smelling more like bad whiskey than if Jack had stuck his nose in a bottle of the stuff. He was drunker than before, but Jack hoped the cold would keep his ass awake.

Back at the cabin, Jack found the Soldier sitting with his bear in front the space heater, staring into the orange coils. On the table sat the nearly polished-off bottle of Heaven Hill. Jack poured the remaining contents into a plastic cup, knocked it back, gagged, shuddered, and walked over to the Soldier.

“So what'd he do to you?”

“Who?”

Jack spread his arms. “Fucking Brock. The commander. Who else?”

“..”

“He told you not to say anything, huh?”

“...”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

Jack stripped out of his heavy gear and took to the couch, spreading blankets over himself. The asset was still staring into the heater and petting his bear.

“You know you're stronger than him, you can fight him off. Just don't kill him.”

“...”

“Hey, look at me!”

The Soldier turned around.

“You can say _no_.”

“I cannot refuse an order from my commander.”

Jack laid his head down and closed his eyes. “Fine. It's _your_ ass.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
November 4-5, 2013**

 

Jack was woken up by the changing of the guard. The Soldier must have slipped out silently but Brock came in stomping, banging, and throwing his shit around. Then he slammed a bottle of scotch on the table and two cups.

“Get up. Have a drink with me.”

Jack groaned, then looked at the bottle. “Where'd you get that from?”

“Brought it with me.”

“So your desperate search through the cupboards this morning was just to see if there was _extra_?”

“Why not?” Brock asked, tearing his gear off, then, “Fuck, how'd I get stuck freezing my ass off until ten at night. Why do you get the day shift?”

Jack poured himself a drink. He needed to get the still-lingering taste of Heaven Hill out of his mouth. “I don't know what you're complaining about when you know your boy is gonna be out there for eight hours in the dark, watching that fucker sleep.”

“He can handle it.” Brock got on the floor in front of the space heater, and Jack joined him.

“Well, I guess that's one of the advantages to being half brain-fucked,” Jack mused, “you don't know when you're miserable.”

“No,” Brock said. “No, he would do it anyway. He would.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sitting out there, with his rifle...” Brock was staring into the coils, dreamy-eyed and gesturing with his hands. “...watching, waiting. Always focused. Always ready to make the perfect shot. Totally dedicated. Believing in the thing he was fighting for, willing to die for it. A true soldier. Yeah, he can handle it.” Brock knocked his cup back and refilled them both.

Jack had one eyebrow raised high, watching Brock as he verbalized his fever dream. “Do you fuckin' hear yourself, bro?”

Brock ignored his question. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

“What did I want to be when I grew up?” Jack repeated. “A Hydra operative, of course.”

“Of course,” Brock laughed, “we all did.” He lifted his cup. “Hail Hydra.”

No one gets asked to join Hydra. Once Pierce offers you the position he makes it very clear that the alternative to joining is dying. That's not to excuse anyone who accepted the invitation; there were surely lots of people that would tell Pierce to go fuck himself, Rogers being the obvious example. Everyone who said yes was either a coward or someone who didn't give a shit about evil assholes taking over the world. Brock and Jack both believed they were members of the latter category.

“Me,” Brock started, stretching out as the scotch warmed him up, “I always wanted to be an army sniper.”

Jack shrugged. “You're an all-right shot.”

“You know who my hero was growing up?”

Okay, now they were getting to it. Drunk Brock was the worst goddamn thing in the world. Jack already knew way more than he should about his commander's life, but he had a feeling they were about to dive into a cesspool that no one should even foot-bathe in.

“As much as it should probably be Hayha or Hathcock,” Jack said, taking a long draft, “based on your drunken rambling, I think I can make a pretty good guess...”

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Bingo,” Jack sighed and emptied his glass. He was going to have to be a lot drunker to make it through this.

Brock continued, only really talking to himself at this point. “I had a giant poster of him on my wall that my mom got me for Christmas. It was him and Rogers but I tore the Rogers side off of it because I always thought he was a pussy...”

Jack took advantage of the thoughtful pause. “Can I interrupt you with a question? Did you take whiskey out there with you? Have you been drinking all -”

“Barnes was the real hero. He was right in the shit with Rogers, covering him on every mission. Rogers would be _dead_ if it wasn't for him! Fucking _dead!"_

“Yeah, I know. Rogers says that all the time -”

“Rogers was a super soldier, he had _advantages_ , but Barnes was just a regular guy -”

“That's not exactly true -”

“... putting himself on the line, volunteering for what most would consider suicide missions.” Brock finished his drink, then held his cup out for Jack to fill it again. “You know what Pierce told me? When Schmidt's guard took him prisoner, Barnes had already picked off eight of their men. The he offered himself for the experiments, to keep the rest of his unit safe.”

Jack squinted into the orange coils, recalling a very different story he had been told. Pierce said that Barnes was the only prisoner that literally pissed himself and tried to hide when Zola came to select a victim, and they figured that his natural cowardice would make him a very obedient subject. It occurred to Jack that probably both of these stories were false, and Pierce had told each of them whatever he thought would make his agents perform better with the Soldier. Jack felt slightly insulted that Pierce thought of him as a works-well-with-pussies type of guy...

“By any chance,” Jack asked, “did Pierce tell you not to share that story with anyone?”

“Yeah, but you won't tell, right?”

“'course not.”

Brock filled his cup again, this time to the brim. Clearly he was hell-bent on a hangover. “You wanna know another secret?”

No, Jack didn't, but he knew it was coming anyway.

“Sometimes I would jerk off to the poster in my room,” Brock confessed.

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled to avoid cracking up. 

“It wasn't like I wanted to fuck him or anything, though. I would imagine him cleaning his rifle, stalking a target, or lining up a shot, and I would get so fucking hard that I could get off without thinking about sex at all. Just him and his rifle. Fucking weird, right?”

Jack shrugged. “Well, I bet you were happy when you found out that you and your sweetheart were playing for the same team.”

“Back around the time Fury gave me command of the team, Pierce called me up to his office. I was scared shitless to be alone with him. He started asking me these questions about what a hero was to me and I just gave Barnes as an example. I could see he thought there was something funny about that, and frankly I felt kinda pissed, especially when he started going off on how heroes and their principles were irrelevant today and blah, blah, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet - you've heard his spiel. Well,” Brock inhaled another mouthful, “I thought that was bullshit and I told him so. And I explicitly stated Barnes as the example of a man who would never turn his back on principles. You can imagine my surprise the next day, when I was introduced to the Winter Soldier.”

Jack laughed. “So you think Pierce asked you to join only so he could show off the asset? That if you hadn't told him about your crush on Barnes he wouldn't have given you the big ultimatum? Well, if that's true, then you're an even bigger idiot than I fucking thought because you still don't know how to keep your mouth shut.” Jack had another laugh at Brock's expense as he poured more liquor out of the bottle. “I'm just kidding, bro. I think your reputation as an asshole had probably preceded you and he knew you would fit right in. Don't blame it all on your mancrush.”

Figuring that it would be wise to end the drinking bout on the high note of Brock's stupidity, Jack got up and took the couch before Brock could call it. He was under the covers and already half-asleep when he heard Brock again.

“You know, I really do care about him. I mean it. Am I such an asshole or a sick fuck because I think of him as a human being?”

Jack peeked at him with one eye. “No, you're a sick fuck because he can't resist you. And I don't mean that like you're sexy, I mean that like _he literally can't resist you._ ”

“What if I told you that he likes it?”

Brock had turned his face so that Jack could now make out his expression. He looked incredibly young and vulnerable, and Jack knew this was probably harder than shit for him to talk about. It might have been flattering to be trusted like this if it wasn't coming from a drunk dick. “If you told me that he liked it, I would honestly have to tell you that people don't usually cry during sexual experiences they enjoy.”

Brock shook his head. “That was one time. I got a little carried away, and I've already told him I'm sorry. I just... wanted to be inside him, know what it feels like, to you know -”

“Brock, please -”

“I'm sorry.”

Jack was taken aback by Brock actually apologizing, but quickly recovered to nip this world-class uncomfortable conversation right in the bud. “Bro, understand that sometimes we all get weird cravings and whatever, but the only advice I can give you in good faith is to completely stop. Immediately and for good. If Pierce finds out, you gotta realize he's gonna kill you, right?”

When Jack didn't hear answer, he shut his eyes and turned his back to Brock. As he snuggled in he heard Brock whisper, “I'm not gonna stop.”

“Honestly, I didn't think you would. Fucking asshole.”

* * *

Jack woke up at about five am and saw Brock sprawled on his back, his legs spread out around both sides of the space heater and the empty bottle of scotch next to him. Jesus.

He quietly suited up and hiked through the freezing darkness until he found the Soldier lying in the snow. He moved aside to allow Jack to get behind the binoculars but didn't prepare to go back, as if he was expected to stay until six o' clock just to keep Jack company. “Go, get your ass out of the cold,” Jack ordered him, laughing. “And make sure you take the spot on the couch. Keep one ear open for the radio, because Rumlow sure as hell ain't gonna hear it.”

The Soldier left without saying a word, and Jack looked forward to nine hours of being hungover in the snow.

Things took a turn for the unexpectedly great when the target was up and bouncing around his house by seven. Jack didn't dare cross his fingers until the guy started shoveling his driveway. 

He radioed back to the cabin and could only imagine what was going on in there as the Soldier tried to wake Brock up and help him extract the Lincoln from the barn. The plan was to have Brock follow him into town and track his movements while Jack and the Soldier searched and fitted the house. 

Jack watched the guy warming up a Volvo, white plumes of exhaust rising as high as his hopes that this would not be a month-long affair after all. The Soldier rejoined him in less than twenty minutes, breath steaming after he had sprinted back loaded with equipment. The Volvo had just left.

“How's the Commander?”

“Ill, but functional.”

Jack laughed as the Soldier looked through the binoculars. “More good news...” Jack said, pointing at the house, “the bastard even shoveled the walkways for us, so prints won't be an issue.”

“Optimal.”

Jack elbowed him gently. “Fucking optimal is right!”

They skipped down the side of the ridge, avoiding patches of snow. An unlocked window told them that the guy wasn't as paranoid as they had initially assumed, so they just did a quick counter-surveillance check before the Soldier started preparing to apply their equipment. Brock hadn't called in a warning, so they could take their time, and since the Soldier's only operational mode was Fast/Perfect, Jack decided to stay out of his way and look around. In other words - pretend babysitting again.

The guy had a lot of books. Mostly military history, the World Wars and Iraq in particular. One volume about Rogers and his Commandos piqued his interest, and then his blood went cold when he read some of the other titles around it – two biographies specifically about Rogers and one about Barnes himself. He almost forgot to put his gloves on before he reached for it, glancing at the asset who was now seated at the target's desk, downloading files and search histories from one of the laptops.

Jack opened the book. Half the text was highlighted and the margins were filled with notes. The few he read had him cursing under his breath.

“What have you found?” the Soldier asked.

Jack shook his head and stuffed the book back in his place. “Just keep goin' with what you're doin'.”

Jack took another look around the shelf and found a few titles that referred to government conspiracies and other titillating mysteries. The first one fell open at a hard crease on the spine to a chapter devoted to none other than the Winter Soldier legend. He stuffed that one back and found another book about historical assassins, where lo and behold, the chapter about “Fictional Operatives and Legends” was covered in notes and yellow highlighter. 

He was still glancing nervously at the Soldier during this nerve-wracking discovery when he noticed that the desk was also covered in open, post-it noted books. He approached, and almost shit himself when he saw a picture of Barnes himself less than two inches from where the asset was resting his elbow. Jack grabbed the book and read through the margin notes for only a few minutes before he was sure he had learned all he needed to.

* * *

Before they had finished installing all the surveillance, Jack ordered the Soldier to pack everything up and go. He may have wanted to question the order but he didn't. When they got back to the cabin the Soldier tried setting up the feed, but Jack stopped him, handed him the bear, and told him to take a nap. He needed one anyway.

Brock returned with a bottle (probably) and a pissed-off attitude because they had left the residence without finishing surveillance. Jack met him by the barn with two cups, and listened as he scraped the Lincoln into the barn and got out with a door-slam.

“You wanna fuckin' tell me -”

“Brock, keep your voice down and listen,” Jack said, making the calming-hands gesture he should have guessed would only piss Brock off more.

Brock came chest-to-chest with Jack. “You disobeyed orders for no apparent fucking re -”

Jack was not going to deal with flecks of spit on his face. He pushed Brock against the wall and they grappled a few seconds before Brock was pinned. Jack wasn’t too proud though, because Brock was always slow and sloppy when he was hungover. “Chill the fuck out!”

Jack backed off and let them both have a minute to pant and straighten their hair before he said, “I know you have a bottle in the car so get it out.” 

Sure enough, Brock hadn't wasted the chance to re-up the liquor supply. After swallowing a heroic amount of whiskey he asked, “So, Rollins, I'm waiting to hear why you fucked up the simplest job you've ever been assigned.”

“That fucker,” Jack whispered, pointing in the direction of the house where said fucker was probably whistling as he put groceries away, “knows who the asset is.”

Brock raised an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

Jack didn't know where to start. He used the tone a schoolteacher would use to explain why you don't swallow bleach. “Well, his house is full of books on topics ranging from Barnes and Rogers to professional assassination and government conspiracy, and all the notes he's scrawled in the margins focus on Zola, Operation Paperclip, Barnes' claim of being a victim of human experimentation, Erskine and Schmidt's relationship, Barnes' never-recovered body, physical descriptions of those claiming to have seen the Winter Soldier, the fact that Shield is the only government agency that could possibly have the resources to house and conceal such an asset, and yes, he uses the word “asset,” I mean, do I really need me to go on?”

“Ohhh, fuck...”

“Right? And I had the Soldier right there, sitting next to a book with a fucking picture of himself in it! I don't even want him looking at whatever he got off the computer. You get it? _That's what he knows._ We have to kill him, find out what he knows, you know, _interrogate_ him, all without the help of the asset -”

“Wait, why without his help?”

Jack squinted at him. Why was such a stupid human being his boss? “Why? Because he'll know who he's talking to as soon as he sees the asset! Maybe he's even trying to draw him here! He knows he'll be killed as soon as the Soldier is in front of him, so promising to let him live is pointless. He'll spend any interrogation trying to work the Soldier's memory about Barnes, Rogers, everything, and it might fucking work as you've pointed out about fucking _Snickers bars!”_

Glancing sideways at Jack, as if he was making this shit up for some reason, Brock asked, “So what do you wanna do?”

“Well, I say we put the Soldier on vacation for the rest of this shit, take a look at what's on the target's hard drive, kill him and get out of here. If you wanna interrogate him...” Jack scratched his head, “I guess that'll be you and me doin' it.”

The best part of using the Soldier was not having to fucking torture people. The Soldier was a perfect interrogator because he neither liked it nor disliked it. He was as comfortable and bored by human viscera as a mechanic was with a car engine. Brock and Jack had been spoiled.

“Do you _wanna_ interrogate him?” Brock asked.

“Do I _want_ to? _Fuck_ no!”

“So you want to kill him outright and tell Pierce we interrogated him first?”

Jack shrugged. It was a good suggestion, but not one that he could have made.

“Fine,” Brock said, and then headed inside the cabin to wake the Soldier up with baby-talk about how cute he looked sleeping with his bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Simo Hayha and Carlos Hathcock are both famous and very rad historical marksmen.
> 
> Hayha was known as the White Death: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4  
> and Hathcock as the White Feather: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Hathcock


	5. Chapter 5

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
November 5-7, 2013 **

“The _fuck_ is this?” Jack said, hearing his own voice reach a whine while he rolled the hollow round in his palm, “Black Talons? Are you fucking insane, or just retarded?”

“No one uses Talons anymore, dipshit,” Brock answered, grabbing the slug out of his hand. “This is some prototype fragmenting shit that Hutchinson and his boys have been working on. They wanted me to test them out in a real-world setting.”

“This isn't a fucking science experiment, Brock!” Jack had left behind all concern for sounding manly or even dignified. “We're trying to blow this poor bastard's head off without making it look like some wetworks shit. What kind of teenagers do you know that have experimental, unmarked, explosive ammunition laying around their bedroom just in case they get a hair up their ass and decide to sack a mountain cabin?”

“Well, excuse the fuck out of me if I didn't plan on staging a robbery when I was packing. I thought we would be digging a hole. This is all the ammunition we've got.”

“What about the Soldier's rifle?”

“Oh,” Brock began laughing creepily, “good luck getting that away from him _now_. He knows something's up, and whatever you want with his rifle, he's going to insist that he mans the weapon. And anyway, his ammo is Hydra-stamped, too, so what's the difference?”

'Hydra-stamped' was operative slang for unmarked, since nothing could be more suspicious to a ballistics expert that was worth a damn, and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before someone smart started looking into it. Jack wasn't the first or the last to bring up that problem, but he was probably going to be the one sent on a murder spree to fix it. You know, the cogs of bureaucracy turn slowly or whatever, but meanwhile, Jack and Brock were sitting there in the Lincoln trying to work out the logistics of making cold-blooded murder appear to be a random break-in gone horribly wrong and all they had was mysterious hi-tech ammunition that would give any conspiracy enthusiast a rock-hard erection.

“I get that you just want this over with,” Jack said, “but the stakes are a little higher for me. I'm the only one that potentially has DNA evidence in there -”

Brock threw the Luger he was loading onto the dashboard in a shit fit. “You're the one that went in there without the suit. What do you want me to do? This was your idea. If you wanna drag him outta there, go the whole nine yards, dig a hole, all without the Soldier, say it now - but I'm sick of this pussy back-and-forth shit.”

Jack had been stupid to walk in there and leave tiny bits of his body everywhere, but he hadn't thought the place was going to end up being a crime scene. The Soldier had nothing to worry about, since he wasn't on file, but Jack's grinning mug would pop up immediately once they put any piece of his anything under the microscope. And once that happened, Pierce would have him put down.

“Is there really no way for us to get some regular, everyday 9 mm rounds? Or what about a more hands-on approach?”

“Okay,” Brock said, throwing his hands up, “here we go again. Just let me know when we settle on a plan to kill this motherfucker.”

After a lazy and unfocused internet search they had discovered that someone in the area was going through summer cabins and taking what they wanted. The police had made it out to be a group of young ruffians, and violence had broken out once when they found a cabin unexpectedly inhabited and an elderly woman was shot by the rifle she kept on her mantle. Brock and Jack were hoping this murder could be heaped on that pile of bullshit, but with the rounds Brock had brought along that was unlikely. 

“Look, take the gun, but let's try to find something to beat him with first.” Beating a man to death was never fun, and Jack, feeling exhausted all the way down to his soul, doubted he could muster the aggression.

In a low, condescending tone, Brock said, “It would be nice if you had bothered to look around his house and find out if he had any rifles or potential weapons when you made your little visit.”

“Hey - _hey!_ ” Jack yelled, “I didn't know we'd be doing this either.” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “I'm not going to sit here and fight with you like a fucking married couple. We'll go in there through the back window with the Luger, find him – hopefully asleep in his bed, blow him away, then turn the place upside down. Done.” Jack swiped a frustrated hand over his face. “Let's go inside and warm-up. Maybe get some sleep before we go down there around two. And Brock – please, no booze.”

 

Being the commander, the first thing Brock did when he got back in the cabin was defy Jack by pouring himself a tall drink. The Soldier was still sitting by the space heater as he had been instructed. It seemed that he had finally lost interest in his bear, because when they entered it was laying abandoned on its side as its keeper turned a cold stare on them that almost canceled the warmth of the cabin.

“How ya doin?” Jack asked impotently as he pulled his boots off. 

“I'm not doing anything.”

“Look at your bear, bro,” Brock said, like it was a neglected child. “Don't you think he'll get cold?”

The Soldier picked the thing up without looking at it and dropped it in his lap. He never took his eyes off of his handlers.

Jack was being tracked by the world's most dangerous somewhat-human as he walked to the couch. It wasn't comforting. The Soldier was like a child being told bedtime stories by parents pathetically trying to hide their pending divorce. As Brock had said, he knew something was up, and vague, lame assurances weren't going to work. Telling him he was on a vacation was the biggest joke Jack hadn't been in on since grade school. The only thing the Soldier understood about vacations was that he didn't want one. There was a mission, (missions being the only thing he gave a damn about) and he was being denied participation. He knew he wasn't being used, and to him, that meant he was _useless_. He'd probably seen enough of his broken, useless weapons be destroyed to make some false guesses about what he was in for, and Jack, for one, didn't want to see how far his survival instinct extended. Something had to be done - something besides Brock's baby talk.

After yesterday's wrestling match by the barn, Brock and Jack had gone inside to check out the shit they had gotten from the house. Brock was pretty quickly convinced. The Hydra operative that had passed intel on to the target didn't have any access to the Soldier and hadn't known who he was or if he even existed, (Pierce didn't let just any grunt hang out with his baby) but obviously, clues were always being dropped and assholes love to talk. The guy had pieced it together himself, which was more than a little impressive. He apparently had enough faith in his theory that he hadn't gone online to broadcast his research in any conspiracy forum, which was actually a mistake. 

While they went through this shit inside, less than twenty feet away from the man they were reading about, the only thing they could do was shout 'Fuck!' or make some other foul exclamations to express how close this guy had gotten to blowing the lid off everything. Suddenly Jack felt very vulnerable. If some nerd in a Canadian cabin could unearth the entire narrative of the Winter Soldier, how long would it be until someone else figured out how to get them all on death row? 

Luckily, Brock had purchased a pack of cigarettes on his trip into town, so when they wanted to talk about specifics, they 'went out for a smoke.' Even then, they were aware of the Soldier's enhanced hearing as well as the fact that he usually came to the window and watched them like a hungry cat impatient for his masters to come in and feed him. He could probably read lips, Jack realized, and that's why they started conferencing in the Lincoln.

It had taken them a day to come up with their half-baked plan. It made no sense to wait for the guy to contact someone if he hadn't already, so they decided to break in that night and kill him in his sleep. That would give them enough time to really go through his house to make sure nothing pointing to Hydra was left behind. Since this was a break-in, they could just take the laptops, the phone, the scrawled-in books, and whatever other messy post-its he had laying around. This also meant, though, that they would have to take the TV, the stereo, whatever jewelry or other valuables they could find, and then load them up in the Lincoln. Jack supposed all that shit would make some nice presents to the Hydra personnel at the Ottawa airstrip. Then they could get on the plane and be home before tomorrow night. 

Jack closed his eyes and began dreaming of the comfort of his own bed. His reverie was interrupted when Brock spouted several disgusting and unfunny euphemisms about defecating before disappearing behind the sheet they had nailed up in front of the bathroom. Jack sat up and took in Brock's empty glass, and beyond that, those icy, creepy blue eyes boring a hole in him.

Jack sighed. “You're worried, aren't you?”

“Why am I not included in this mission?”

“You are!” Jack lifted his voice like he was talking to a child who hadn't made the All-Star team. “You're the driver!” he assured.

“Why are we staging a robbery? Why was I not referred to during planning? Has the councilman authorized this strategy?”

Jack's voice broke as he tried to find good answers for any one of these questions. The Soldier never asked questions, let alone three in one breath. “Well...” 

Jack searched his brain, then hit upon something so perfect he congratulated himself for his genius. He sat up and gave a conspicuous glance to the bathroom, silently gesturing for the Soldier to join him on the couch. The Soldier did so and leaned his ear in.

“Look, the commander doesn't want you to know this, 'cause he's kinda sensitive about it,” Jack whispered, “but it was actually Pierce that ordered us to let you relax while we took care of this one. He's been worried that him and I have gotten a little wet behind the ears, depending on you all the time, and he wanted to make sure we were still on our game. It's nothing _you_ did, you're great, everyone's happy with you – it's _us_ who are kind of in trouble. So,” Jack glanced at the bathroom again, “I don't have to tell you that this is just between us, right?”

The Soldier ignored the question and narrowed his eyes at Jack. “You're saying that the councilman has ordered you and the commander to handle the mission because he believes you to be incompetent?”

Jack suddenly doubted the brilliance he had credited himself with moments before, realizing what an incredibly stupid lie he had just told. “Well, yeah, you know - Pierce is like God,” Jack shrugged, “he works in mysterious ways.”

“Whew! Don't go in there!” Brock burst out of the bathroom and went right back to talking about shit. It probably was a disaster he had left behind, considering his alcohol intake, but no one wanted to hear about it or had any plans of investigating its scale of toxicity. The toilet was only a hole in the ground, and though they had brought a gallon of chemicals to dump in it, it did little to mitigate the stench. Jack was sure the entire cabin would smell like a port-o-potty if they remained there for an entire month.

“What does he mean? Why should we not go in there?”

Brock laughed. “You tell him, Jack.”

“Because there's more shit in the air than air,” Jack explained flatly, “and with your heightened sense of smell, you'll probably pass out.”

Brock came over and poured himself another drink, looking right at Jack while he did it. Jack was too tired to get pissed about it. 

“What are you two doing, having a pow-wow?” Brock asked, “Girl talk?”

“You jealous?” Jack asked, earning him a nice glare. He nudged the Soldier off the couch with his foot and laid back. It would probably be best to get some sleep so at least one of them would have a clear head. He heard Brock settle down on the floor beside the Soldier, and decided not to check and see if they were cuddling or worse.

 

It was a little after two when Jack was awoken by drafts of cold air and movement. The Soldier was up and loading the Lincoln. Jack took a look at the kitchen table and saw that the computer and all the technical equipment were already gone, and felt a tiny panic wondering if the Soldier had taken a look at any of it. From the usual determined look on his face, though, it was doubtful.

“It's time,” he said when he noticed Jack looking at him.

“Yeah,” Jack answered, getting up and kicking Brock awake. “Let's go, dickhead.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potential triggers: gore, violence, drunk driving.

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
November 7, 2013 **

“Why the _fuck_ do these things have to be yellow?” Brock asked as he pulled on the plastic jumpsuit. They were standing outside of the Lincoln, which was parked in front of the target's gate. They had glided the Piece-of-Shit silently down the hill, again without headlights, and no one had any idea how the Soldier could see in two am darkness. 

“It's to make sure we're visible to whoever we're trying to sneak up on and kill,” Jack answered, honestly grateful that Brock was creating a reason to lighten the mood. “Either that, or some of the techs wanted something they could use for their _Breaking Bad_ cosplay, fucking dorks that they are.”

“How do I look?” Brock asked, spreading his arms.

“Like an asshole,” Jack answered. “But you should feel lucky – most people go their entire lives without finding an outfit that perfectly expresses their inner-self.”

After being rewarded with an obligatory sock in the arm, Jack said, “All right. Let's get our teenage drug-fueled B&E on.”

They hopped the fence and walked up the long drive. When they passed the gaping and uncurtained windows, Brock voiced Jack's thoughts exactly - “We're probably glowing in the dark like a couple of fucking space aliens in these things. If he _is_ awake, he sure as shit sees us and he probably thinks we're here to abduct him.”

Jack snorted and led him to the window he had used before. They gave it a tug and found it locked.

“Fuck.”

“Best laid plans, huh?” Brock seemed unnaturally okay with this turn of events.

“I guess we'll just have to pick the front door,” Jack whispered. “Might be less noisy, come to think of it.”

They walked around to the front, not minding the footsteps they were leaving in the snow. The prints wouldn't have tread, though, and Jack distantly wondered if that was going to be a problem, since teenagers don't usually commit crimes in hazmat suits.

Brock was on his knees, taking forever picking the lock, and it was all Jack could do to keep himself from teasing him about it. Finally he got it, winked up at Jack (who rolled his eyes since his performance was anything but impressive) and began slowly turning the handle when Jack, who had been standing with his ear to the door, heard a faint creak and a snap from inside. His heart stopped. He gripped Brock's shoulder and pointed to his ear and then the door. 

Brock understood immediately. He released the handle even more slowly than before and reached into his suit for the Luger. The sound of him cocking it was almost deafening in the tense silence.

He nodded up at Jack, who flattened himself against the door and extended his arm to the knob. He turned it as slowly as possible and then began pushing it open with his frozen heart in his throat. Whatever some assholes say, you _never_ get used to this shit.

The door was barely cracked when a pants-shitting blast blew a giant hole in it, inches from Jack's face. 

_”Fuck!”_

Jack flew backwards and fumbled for his own weapon. Brock's crazy ass was already on his feet, kicking the door open and firing into the darkness. After emptying all eight rounds into the room, everything was quiet again.

Jack flew inside the house and began feeling the wall until he found a light switch. He flipped it on and his heart dropped out of his throat and plummeted to his gut. 

_”Holy fucking Christ, Brock!”_

“I think I got him.” 

“Yeah, no _shit!_ ”

The guy's head was literally all over the room. The walls, the ceiling, everything. Jack dared himself to step closer and saw that apparently two rounds had hit him because his torso was nearly blown in half, much of that now glazing the couch and coffee table. The double barrel of the rifle next to him was open which meant that he had probably been trying to reload when Brock delivered him to oblivion. The other six rounds that had missed him had done some pretty spectacular damage to the walls.

“Pretty good, right?” Brock asked, laughing nervously. “Two out of eight, and in the dark, too. Well, kind of. The first round lit the room well enough for me to see his outline. And these things, wow – I mean...”

Jack stepped forward to start beating him, but was stopped by the sound of footsteps running up the drive. Jack readied his weapon, but was relieved when he peaked out the door and saw who it was. Relieved, but also pissed.

“We told you to _stay in the car!_ Did we call for you? I thought English was one of your languages?”

The Soldier was standing at the end of the drive, rifle in hand. “I heard shots.”

“No _shit_ you heard shots! You should've been worried if you _didn't_ hear them.”

“I heard nine of them - not one, as planned.”

Jack considered making a crack about how that should be enough proof of his handlers' incompetence, but instead just pointed down the drive and said in a menacing, parent-that's-had-enough voice, “Take your ass back to the Lincoln and drive it up here. When you get up here, _stay the fuck inside._ Now _go._ ”

The Soldier seemed reluctant to leave and Jack knew what his problem was. “The commander's fine. Brock, come over here and show him you're alive.”

Brock walked to the open door and blew him a kiss, which was disturbing with how much brain matter his jumpsuit was misted with.

The Soldier turned and disappeared into the darkness. He was back in a flash with the Piece-of-Shit, and had probably pried the gate open with his arm because they hadn't told him to pick it in the traditional way, but since the operation had already been bungled beyond belief Jack figured it didn't really matter anymore.

The shelves and desk were sprayed with gore. Unfortunately this was the area Jack had been charged with, (since he knew what they were looking for) so he was stepping over Brock's fuck-up, slipping in it and tracking it all over the place. Everything they were stuffing in the Lincoln was coated with human remains, so he could only hope the stolen goods would make up for the state it was going to be in when they returned it to the airstrip. 

He took every book that was remotely relative to anything that had to do with government, history, or military topics and even a few things that didn't, being sure to make a mess of whatever was left behind. He went through all the drawers, taking anything that might be important and tossing them across the room when he was done with them, letting blank sheets of paper and receipts soak into the pools of blood on the floor. He even took a few nicknacks and antiquey-looking things he figured a dumb kid might think were valuable. 

He made several trips in and out of the house, totally involved in what he was doing and trying to do it as quickly as possible, until he heard a voice beside him while he was dumping a load in the Piece-of-Shit's trunk. 

“Why are we taking books?”

Jack jumped. _“Shit!_ What did I say, huh?” He took the Soldier by the shoulders and physically turned him around, then marched him back to the driver's seat. “I said _stay in the fucking car!_ ” Jack opened the car door and ducked the Soldier's head like a cop before shoving him inside. “Don't let me catch you out of this seat again, hear me?” For some reason, Jack felt the urge to strap the seat belt over his chest, then said, “We're leaving in just a minute, okay? Relax and stay put.”

He didn't wait for an answer, he just slammed the door and let out a stream of expletives. The whole point of putting the sensitive shit in the trunk was to keep it away from the Soldier but the nosy little fucker wouldn't leave well enough alone. They had to get out of there. 

Jack almost ran into Brock coming out the door with the sixty-inch TV. 

“Grab everything else out of the entertainment thing,” he told Jack. “It's all unhooked.”

Jack loaded his arms sloppily with a receiver, a PS3, some kind of internet thing and another box he didn't care about, then ran to the Lincoln with wires trailing behind him. He threw them inside. 

“Did you find any jewelry or anything?” he asked Brock, who was savagely and unsuccessfully trying to jam the TV in the back seat.

“No, but you can take another look,” he answered, then turned to the Soldier, “Can I maybe get a hand?”

The Soldier looked to Jack as if he was the commander now. “Go ahead,” he nodded, and the Soldier immediately unstrapped himself.

Jack walked through the rooms of the house, seeing the utter destruction. In the bedroom, the mattress was on its side. Clothes everywhere, the mirror broken, and obviously, the drawers pulled from the dresser. The bathroom was as fucked as possible, though men living alone didn't usually have much to fuck up in their bathroom. The mess in the kitchen, which featured shattered condiment jars, was reminiscent of what was left in the living room, which Jack next returned to.

There were a few pictures of children in the house. Jack assumed they were his. They had not only killed these kids' father, they had mutilated him in an unholy way. The best special effects team in the world couldn't create a scene of horror like this. He imagined his kids asking how their father had died, and the lies adults would tell them. They would never know about this mess, hopefully, but due to Brock and Jack's vigilance, they wouldn't know what a hero their father had been, either. How he had died trying to liberate another hero from the most heinous kind of enslavement and abuse the world would hopefully never know the full extent of. They wouldn't know that he had come closer than anyone else had in the almost eighty years of its existence to destroying the most powerful and ruthless organization on the planet. He was a good guy. A real one. In one of those terrifying moments of self-awareness all people try to avoid, Jack suddenly saw himself for what he really was – a villain. And not a sympathetic one driven by misguided love or idealism – he was a real piece of scum, someone who does the footwork that keeps evil and iniquitous power structures in place to save their own ass and hobbles around on the crutch of cynicism to keep himself moving. The world would be a better place without him. 

Apparently they had gotten the TV in the car because Brock was standing behind him. He clapped Jack hard on the back and massaged his neck in an obnoxious brotherly fashion. “Forget it, Jake - it's Chinatown.”

The absurdity of Brock's statement had accomplished what must have been its purpose. Like a drop of food-coloring in a still glass of water, it spread through Jack's mind and completely brought him out of his trance. He turned slowly to Brock's face, and saw his eyes wide and honest, smiling gently with understanding.

_”What?”_ Jack heard himself ask.

Brock shrugged and gave him an incredulous look, before smiling mischievously and putting on the weirdest, silliest affectation he was probably capable of. “Fuhget it, Jake - it's _Chinatown._ ” Then he stood there with his hands out, like he was expecting something.

“Who the fuck is _Jake_?” 

Brock rolled his eyes. “All right, fuck it. Let's go.”

Brock pulled Jack from where he was planted to the floor and dragged him out of the house. 

“What about the lights? And the door?” Jack whined as Brock shoved him in the passenger seat much the way Jack had shoved the Soldier in several minutes before.

“Leave 'em,” Brock answered. “It makes it look more like we left in a hurry. Besides, it's better if the animals get to him.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jack moaned before the door was slammed.

Brock jumped in the backseat and they started driving off. Seeing that Jack was obviously in a bad way, he reached over the seat with what was left of the bourbon. “Here, pour as much of that down your throat as you can. You've earned it.”

Jack promptly complied, then almost puked all over his stupid hazmat suit. As he handed the bottle back to Brock he noticed they were once again sailing through the darkness. “Hey,” he said bitchily to their driver, “can we have some headlights? I think we've had enough nerve-wracking bullshit for one night.”

The Soldier flipped on the lights and Jack whispered some sarcastic thanks under his breath while he pulled himself out of his suit. As he was turning around to throw it in the back, Brock asked, “Hey, did you see this?”

Brock used his phone to illuminate a lump of plastic on the seat next to him. 

“What the fuck is that?” Jack said, squinting.

“It's the TV. Our boy here just folded it like a taco.”

Jack tried not to, honestly he did, but he had to laugh. It started slowly, and then he pictured the Soldier actually doing it, what was going on in his no-nonsense head during it, and suddenly he was chuckling out loud. 

“I made it fit,” the Soldier explained.

“Yes you did,” Jack confirmed. “Good work, Soldier.”

Jack wound himself down from his laughter and, knowing it was the bourbon that had put out the fire of his existential crisis, was now craving more of the stuff. “Fuck,” he said, “that bottle's almost empty, isn't it?”

“Just finished it.”

Jack ran a disappointed hand down his face and groaned.

“No worries!” Brock's voice was bright and then Jack could hear some promising clinks from behind him.

“What the fuck is that?” Jack asked, craning his neck.

“We got a full bar back here in the Piece-of-Shit, right beneath the taco TV. What do you want – we got gin, rum, cognac -”

“Where did you - _did you steal that from the house?_ ”

“Of course!” Brock answered joyously. “No kid would leave it behind. Besides, that guy's not gonna need it anymore.” Brock continued listing, “... vodka, scotch, bourbon, something blue, more bourbon, tequila, cinnamon whiskey -”

“Cinnamon whiskey?” Jack broke in, “What is that – like a joke? Smell it.”

He heard Brock sniff and make an exaggerated retching sound. “Yeah, it's cinnamon whiskey all right.”

“Taste it!”

“ _You_ fuckin' taste it!”

“Fuck no.”

“I know -” Brock said, shaking the bottle over the seat, “Soldier, drink this and report its toxicity level.”

Jack was laughing too hard to keep this behemoth of bad decisions from taking place. Without taking his eyes off the road, the Soldier unscrewed the bottle and started pouring it into his mouth. 

He was still looking straight ahead as he emptied half the bottle into himself.

“Whoa, _whoa_...” Jack said, like an idiot, just watching this disaster happen.

The Soldier lifted the bottle higher as he got down to the dregs, and then it was gone. He screwed the cap back on, shivered, burped and handed it back over the seat, all without ever turning from the road.

“Fuck yeah!” Brock shouted. “I'm keeping this on my mantle at home.”

“You _would!_ ” Jack was whining again. That seemed to happen a lot when he was with these two. “But bro, what if he _can_ get drunk! He's driving, and it's gonna hit him like a freight train!” 

Brock was too busy celebrating the Soldier's majestic drinking feat to give a shit about their impending doom, so Jack just looked at the driver and said, “Pull the fuck over, I'm taking the wheel.”

“What!” Brock suddenly tuned back in. “No! No way! The Soldier drives and that's it. This – this is research! Which reminds me – Soldier, what is your assessment of the liquid's toxicity?”

“Thirty-five percent alcohol. Corn syrup and artificial flavorings _were_ also detected, but those compounds are only toxic in large quantities.”

“So what is the prognosis for your intoxicated condition?”

“Impaired hand-eye coordination, impaired vision, impaired reaction time, impaired judgment, impaired focus - beginning in about ten minutes and lasting about four hours when -”

“That's a lot of fucking impairments, don't you think?” Jack shouted at him. “So why'd you do it?

“I was ordered to.”

“Bullshit! You were also ordered to stay in the car and that went in one ear and out the other. I think you're suffering from a serious case of selective obedience.”

“Get off his fuckin' case, Rollins,” Brock said, coming to the rescue. “You were sitting right there next to him, you could have grabbed the bottle out of his hands at any time. Admit it, you _wanted_ to see if he would finish it. Stop with the prudey bitch act – no one's buying it.”

That did shut Jack up for a second, until he saw something that almost made him think he was hallucinating – the Soldier's lips curling in a suppressed smile.

Jack leaned forward to get a better look. “Are you laughing at me?” Jack asked, his tone completely free of sarcasm. “Brock, get a load of this. This fucker's actually laughing. At _me_.”

The Soldier's face broke into a full smile, teeth and all, and would actually have been kind of pleasant if it wasn't so jarring and weird.

Brock was half over the seat to get a look at this miracle, ruffling the Soldier's hair and demanding that this should be celebrated – with booze, of course.

“Come on, Jack,” Brock shouted, “he's not laughing at _you_ , he's laughing at the stick you keep firmly planted in your ass. Have some more bourbon and loosen up,” he said, passing the bottle which was happily received and opened, “I swear, if you're not bitching, you're brooding.”

Jack was already dumping bourbon down his throat so he had to wait before he defended himself. “Brooding?” he coughed, wiping his lips, “I don't _brood._ ”

“Oh yeah? Then what do you call standing mesmerized over a corpse in the middle of a mission like it was your father or something?”

“First off - that's not what anyone but an idiot would call brooding, asshole, so learn to speak English. Second, I was having a _moment_ , an introspective one - you know, that happens to most of us in middle age, we reflect - I know your maturity level is still stuck somewhere in or around fifteen, but the rest of us have a much richer inner life that blossoms in middle age - _anyway_ , as I was saying, I was having a moment that you came and shit all over with your – what the fuck even _was_ that? - _Chinatown_ fuckin bull- seriously what did you say? 'Let's go to Chinatown!' or 'See you in Chinatown' and then you're callin me Jake-”

“Nope.”

“Yes! Something – something - Chinatown, Jake – fucking-”

“No! That's not what I said,” Brock had to shout over Jack, who was honestly rambling at this point. “For someone who wants to call _me_ out on being dumb, your cultural sophistication is pretty shitty. I was quoting Polanski's 1974 neo-noir classic _Chinatown_ , specifically the last scene, where Jack Nicholson, playing Jake the private eye, is standing over his lover's dead body, with her eyeball all shot out, her pretty face all fucked up and horrifying, and he's just stunned, standing there just like you were, and his friend pulls him away and says, 'Forget it Jake - it's Chinatown.'”

Brock stopped as if that explained anything. Or maybe he just stopped to drink.

“So what the fuck does Chinatown have to do with anything? To be honest, Brock, I remember seeing that movie a long time ago and that always bugged me. I hate artsy names like that - _Chinatown._ ” Jack accented the title with jazz hands and a body wiggle. “Why don't they name it _Incest_ or _Water Problems_ or something the movie was actually about? Stupid fuckin' movie. And what does any of that have to do with _me_?”

“Well, in the movie, the private eye used to be a beat cop in Chinatown – in LA – which was kind of an intense place back then – the thirties or the forties or whatever. The thirties I think...”

Jack rolled his eyes and took another heavy swig. This stream of consciousness conversation must be pretty hilarious to the Soldier, he thought, but then again he was shitfaced, too. Jack watched him rub his nose as he continued driving silently. He was probably taking this all in, listening more intently to them than they were to each other, getting a strange glimpse of the outside world he wouldn't otherwise have. 

“...anyway, Jake becomes a private eye and everyone assumes it's 'cause he's greedy, but really, as we find out, it's because he can't deal with Chinatown. He's too soft. He's got this intense moral code, a giant stick up his ass – _like someone else we know_ – and he can't accept that bad things happen sometimes for no reason. People get hurt, accidents happen, justice isn't served, bad guys get away – that's it. Chinatown represents all those bad things you can't control, and there's no point obsessing over it.”

Jack snorted, “Don't get me wrong, Brock, that was very articulate and all, especially for a retard of your caliber, but I think you have it back-asswards. The bad guys get away? We _are_ the bad guys.”

“What? We're not the bad guys!” Brock punched Jack's shoulder and pointed at the Soldier, as if he didn't see _that._ “We're the good guys, trying to bring peace to the world, but sometimes you have to do bad things to make that happen. Things you just have to forget about. _Chinatown._ ”

Jack knew all that nauseating bullshit was meant for the benefit of the Soldier, but he honestly didn't understand why. The Soldier was a killing machine, he didn't give a fuck about ideology. Being a bad guy was just fine with him. Jack wondered if Brock _really_ needed that childish nonsense for _himself._

“Whatever...” Jack mumbled. The whole issue was easy to shrug off at this level of drunkenness. Him and Brock had been trading off – while one blathered, the other one guzzled and half-listened. “Fuck it, fine. _Chinatown._ ”

“There ya go, that's the spirit.” Brock threw himself back into his seat and lit a cigarette.

“Hey gimme one of those,” Jack said, setting his bottle down on the seat between him and the Soldier. That's when he noticed it. He couldn't fucking believe he was the first one to do so. A goofy feeling began frothing in the back of his throat. 

“Oh my god,” he whispered, affecting panic. “You guys!

“What?”

“Oh my god, this so fucked!”

“What!”

“We – we've left an operative behind!”

Even the Soldier was blinking in confusion.

Brock pinched his face up in disgust. “ _What?_ What are you talking about, we're all here!” 

“No!” Jack started pointing excitedly at the empty middle front seat and shouted, _"Mr. Fucking Bear!”_


	7. Chapter 7

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
November 7, 2013 **

The reaction was way more dramatic than Jack could have expected or should be held responsible for.

The Soldier noted the empty space between the seats and his lips started trembling. He sat up straight as a board, and that should have been a warning.

Brock casually reentered the front seat space for another laugh, paying no mind to the Soldier's determined attentions to the left of the vehicle and his upright posture and the fact that he was clearly about to plow them into the mild valley that was the center divider in order to make a very serious u-turn.

Jack knew he would never forget the sweet timber of Brock's voice right before it happened: “Hey, why'd you leave my pre - _whoa, fuck!_ ” 

Brock crashed face-first into the front seat as the Lincoln barreled into the gravel at sixty miles an hour. They were swimming in it, fishtailing as the Soldier struggled to maintain control on a twenty-degree slope and steering the Lincoln towards the other side, at which point he headed straight up the ridge and began speeding along the shoulder. Jack was bear hugging Brock this whole time to keep his head from ending up on the floorboard, listening to his muffled shouts while his legs flailed around in the back, where the taco TV and the liquor collection bounced around chaotically.

The Piece-of-Shit seemed to be unhappy with this rough treatment, as demonstrated by both the hallow, creaky gurgling and the lurching it made (not unlike a cat getting ready to puke) as the Soldier forced it up to speed. They veered onto the highway with a trail of dust and gravel flying out of the wheel wells. 

Brock had managed to get his ass out of the air but he was still hanging his arms over the front seat, so apparently he hadn't learned that his was a dangerous position to be in while the Soldier was in GTA mode. Maybe he liked having his face in Jack's crotch as they blasted through the gravel, or maybe he was hoping for a spectacular death when the Soldier had to brake hard and he'd go flying out the windshield like a human cannonball. 

Presently, Jack and Brock were engaged in a bizarrely lighthearted and giggle-filled argument about whose fault this was, as if the Soldier was a computer and they were trying to figure out whose porn had caused a virus.

“Why the fuck did you have to point it out to him?” Brock's voice was already getting scratchy from the drunken shouting and laughing. “I could have just bought him another one of those things when we got to DC!”

“Hey - _hey!_ Jack was waving his finger, “Don't you even – I told you _four days ago_ that thing was going to be nothing but trouble. It was like a premonition! _You_ bought the fucking thing, _you_ gave it to him, and _you_ got him drunk while he was in control of the vehicle. This beauty is all yours, Brock. I'm not claiming any of your glory.”

Brock picked up the cigarette that had fallen from his lips when his face collided with the seat and re-lit it. A huge burn was left on the seat where it had smoldered, but it wasn't even worth mentioning considering the otherwise damage the Piece-of-Shit had been met with.

Jack was the one to hit upon the bright idea of actually asking the Soldier what the fuck he thought he was doing. “Who fucking told you to turn around?”

“We had to. The item would arouse suspicion if found. There may be perfunctory searches of the surrounding area once the crime scene is discovered.”

“Good thinking, Soldier,” Brock said, then elbowed Jack and winked. “But next time, a little warning would be nice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also, we have an appointment at the airstrip for eight 'o' clock, so...”

The Soldier immediately floored the gas pedal, and Brock had accomplished setting yet another potential disaster in motion.

The speedometer crawled past one hundred as the Lincoln continued to insist that it was not made for this shit, doing the puking cat while it kept switching down to fourth for acceleration. Finally the thing was whirring high even in top gear and the car started shaking. They passed eighteen wheelers that seemed to be standing still. Jack said nothing but reached for his seat belt.

“Hey! What kinda way is that to show your comrade your faith in him?” Brock said, blocking the buckle with his hand. “Live a little,” and he clinked his bottle against the one Jack had stuck between his legs.

“Live a little? What do you think I'm trying to do? I'm trying to live a little longer than this car trip.”

Jack let the seat belt fly out of his hands anyway and resigned himself to Brock's nihilistic reign over the Piece-of-Shit. He would need more bourbon for this, so he supplied his body with another heavy dose. Then he noticed the cell phone glow shrouding Brock's face behind him. 

“Please tell me you're not checking twitter right now.”

Brock looked at him like he just farted. “This is my police scanner. We're in a hurry, remember? We don't have time to get stopped.”

“Why not?” Jack said, settling back even though they were flying down the road at something beyond a hundred and ten miles an hour. It was hard to say since the speedometer stopped there. “You've already got a trunk full of gory conspiracy books, a taco TV, a box of open liquor, two viscera-smeared _Breaking Bad_ costumes to match the books, a drunk cyborg chauffeur – really all you need is a dead cop to complete Brock Rumlow's Roving – or Speeding - Cabinet of Curiosities.”

“As much as I'd love to provide some lonely graveyard-working asshole cop with the last and most interesting stop of his life, I think we're already pushing it as it is with the condition this thing is gonna be in when we bring it back. If we add a body to this mess they may just decide to dig a hole for four.”

“No,” the Soldier casually denied.

“No?”

“No, I would never permit that, and the councilman would never authorize it -”

“That's right!” Brock exclaimed, gripping and shaking the Soldier's shoulder, which probably wasn't the greatest idea while he was trying to control the speeding, tremulous vehicle. “We got our boy here watching our backs!”

“... if he wanted you dead, I would be the one sent to execute the task,” the Soldier finished with the same chilling, calm tone. The car went silent as his handlers realized that this was undoubtably true, and if Brock was thinking of asking some obnoxious question like, 'But you wouldn't do that, would you?' he didn't, probably because even an idiot like him realized that all three of them would murder each other in cold blood if they were ordered to. 

It was the Soldier, strangely enough, to break the silence, but only to make things even more uncomfortable. “Commander, is it true that the councilman was in contact with you and ordered you to release me from duty for the duration of the mission?”

“What?”

Jack wanted to strangle him. One of his hands even reached towards him, before his brain reminded it what a bad idea that would be. “Oh my god – what are you fucking _thinking?_ -”

“Wait - _what?_ ” Brock put a hand on Jack's shoulder to shut him up.

Jack covered his face, betrayal and frustration mixing with fear that he might actually get shit for this. _Whatever,_ he told himself, _you're not the pervert in the car, so they can both go fuck themselves._ That perked him up immediately, and he sat up, ready to defend his fuck-up with all the shitiness he could muster.

“Agent Rollins told me – perhaps untruthfully – that the councilman had lost faith in your competency and wanted this mission to be a test of your ability to perform without my help. Agent Rollins also told me that you were ashamed of this fact and did not wish me to know about it.” 

Jack had been too stunned to speak once he heard the word 'untruthfully' and remained in such a state through the insinuation that only Brock had been supposedly incompetent and all the way to the way to the word 'ashamed.' The manipulative little fucker was clearly playing some sort of game and Rollins was going to have a serious talk with _someone_ about his faulty programming. Wasn't he supposed to be scared shitless of them?

The Soldier wasn't done. “He told me not to tell you what he had said.”

_”You little fuck!”_ Jack screamed, and punched the Soldier's arm. Even the right one seemed too hard to be flesh. It hurt like punching a wall but of course he wasn't going to rub it. “Brock, bro, I swear - half – actually _most_ \- of that was bullshit, seriously.”

Jack caught Brock's crookedly drunk grin in the rear view mirror, as well as his eyes shifting back and forth between him and the Soldier. Then he let his head fall back and let out a long, amused moan.

“That is a lie,” Brock drawled. He gave weight each word, and Jack suspected that the purpose was to add intelligibility to the sentence rather than drama. The booze had finally made his tongue heavy.

“A lie I ordered him to tell you.”

Okay, Jack thought, that was fine. But then Brock kept going.

“You wanna know the truth of it?”

The Soldier didn't answer, since knowing what he wanted wasn't one of his strengths, but Brock didn't care. “Truth of it is, the guy had discovered your identity. I mean, who you were... before... you were who you are... now. _That_ you. We had to keep you away from it, so you wouldn't find out. Didn't want to upset you, but now that you know because of Jack's dumb ass fucking lie...”

At this point, Jack was positive that Brock was suicidal. He began to wonder if killing Brock would be something Pierce would expect him to do right now. There weren't any protocols on when you ought to put down your fellow operatives because they're endangering the mission, but maybe it was time to make an executive decision.

The vehicle had slowed to seventy miles an hour and the Soldier was clearly thinking about something besides his bear. “So who was he?” the Soldier asked.

“Who was he?” Brock repeated.

Jack thought of chiming in, it would really be a good time to do so, but his brain couldn't cook something up faster than Brock could. Not that Brock put much effort into it.

“Well, uh, he was an army sniper...”

Jack twisted around in his seat so fast his head swam. He gave Brock a murderous glare.

“... a _Russian_ army sniper,” Brock said, looking right back into Jack's face.

Jack turned back around and opened the bottle again, hoping that if he could get as drunk as Brock this shit might somehow seem fun to him, too.

“A Russian army sniper that was better than any that had ever lived. Your enemies were terrified of you, and for good reason. All you cared about was getting better at what you did, but still you were bothered by every soldier that got away from you as well as every one you killed. You were haunted by them. So, one day, against orders, you slaughtered your way into a Hydra base and demanded that they take you. They did, of course, since you were worth a fucking thousand of their shitheads, but Zola had different plans for you. He offered to make you the soldier you always wanted to be – without feelings or guilt or flaws. And you said yes and that's it.”

Jack was somewhat impressed with this fairy tale Brock had pulled out of his ass, or his bottle, as it were. He almost wished it was true, but if that were the case then -

“Why was this history taken from my memory?”

The Soldier finished Jack's thought. 

“Well, you wanted it that way. You didn't want your memories to get in the way of your killing magic.”

Jack snuck a sideways glance to see how the Soldier was reacting to all this. His features were drawn in, and Jack assumed he was trying to imagine himself as this mythical turncoat knight who willingly let himself be transformed into a god of death, and... he really seemed okay with it. Who wouldn't be? Maybe before he just guessed he was a kidnapped chimney sweep or something.

The Soldier checked the road signs and picked up speed, his mind apparently settled.

Jack could see they were near their exit and the trip back up to the cabin at full speed and sans headlights was probably going to be an even more thrilling experience than the first time they braved the road. Jack let himself relax for a little while before the nightmare began.

He considered the fake story Brock had fed the Soldier. Maybe it was a gift Brock had given him. Being the world's greatest sniper, the Soldier had to assume himself famous and guess that his notoriety was the reason his identity had to be protected. After being treated like a dog or worse for as long as he could remember, to be told that he was really a man that others used to respect and admire must be emotionally transforming. Problem was, emotional transformation wasn't something anybody wanted for the Soldier.

Jack stole another look at him and there didn't seem to be anything on his mind except the miles of road ahead of him. Jack might be giving him too much credit, or maybe the Soldier had already surmised that the story was bullshit and was planning to kill them both at the cabin and take off with the Lincoln. After all, it had to seem a little incongruous that a man who had willingly given himself to become the Winter Soldier would be brutalized and forced to undergo brainwashing procedures and other painful experiments because he had “wanted it that way.” _Fuck_ , Jack thought, _we are going to die._

After less than five minutes of calm, Brock got bored by himself in the back and threw his arms over the seat. “Hey, how ya doin with that bottle?” he asked, and seeing the contents said, “Come on, pussy, you gotta keep up! Have the Soldier give you a hand if you need to.”

“I think he's got his hands full right now,” Jack said before he followed the commander's orders to get drunker. Maybe if he passed out he wouldn't know when the Soldier put a bullet in his face.

“We're going to exit the freeway,” the Soldier warned Brock.

“No shit. What, do you think I wanna be riding on this thing forever?”

But the Soldier had neglected to include the word _now_ at the end of his sentence. They were still in the left-hand lane in order to pass a big rig that was also exiting, and the Soldier barely made the off-ramp when he cut the rig off. They got a nice horn blast from the driver and Brock was thrown first into Soldier and then into Jack as they took the looped off-ramp at maybe seventy. The Soldier blasted through a red light and Jack shoved Brock off of him.

“Now would be a good time for your police scanner,” Jack suggested.

The Soldier had already sped through two more red lights before Brock got the thing up and running, and though they hadn't been close to getting hit, Jack still would have found it comforting if the Soldier at least pretended to be checking for other cars.

“We're clear,” Brock confirmed.

The Soldier took that as permission to floor it again. In a few minutes, the road narrowed and they were among the trees again. The Soldier forced the Piece-of-Shit up the twisting mountain road, the transmission fighting him the whole time. He shut the lights off again, and Jack didn't say anything, he just listened to Brock cackling. In the darkness, the lights of the house they had just ravaged were bright to the left of them. No one commented, though Brock and Jack both turned their heads and watched it as long as it was visible.

Jack had been bracing himself for the moment when the Soldier whipped them onto the dirt drive, but it was no good; he still startled and cursed at the sudden turn. And if the first trip up had been obnoxiously bouncy, at fifty miles-an-hour it was like being tied to a demon-possessed vibrating bed. Jack swore he could feel his bowels loosening.

They stopped two inches short of the barn and the Soldier jumped out. Jack had almost forgot that he wanted to use this time to yell at Brock.

“What the fuck was that all about?” he shouted over his shoulder.

“What was what about?” Brock's coy response was nauseating.

“ _That fucking story!_ He volunteered? Are you kidding? Do you think he believes that?”

“Why wouldn't he?”

Jack didn't have time to answer that, so he just kept venting. “A talented sniper taking down Hydra bases? Are you trying to test his memory? Are you determined to get us fucking killed before I get a shower and a good night's sleep in my own bed?”

“Lies that are mostly true are the easiest to believe,” said the philosopher in the back seat.

“Yeah, that's perfect, Brock. Half top secret intel, half retarded. You could have just told him he was a serial killer that used to eat babies or the general of some child army. Literally _anything_ would have been better.”

There was no more time to bitch. The cabin door slammed shut and the Soldier was back in the front seat a second later, bear in hand. The thing brought the cold with it, or so it seemed. Jack held the squishy little ball of ice while the Soldier strapped him in, and Jack couldn't help feeling that the expression sewn onto the bear's face was one of contempt for being left behind.

The Soldier jerked the Lincoln into reverse and turned them down the road. They rolled away with all the grace of a covered wagon having a seizure. The yellow lines on the mountain road were almost visible and Jack was not surprised when they got back on the freeway and the dimmest beginnings of sunrise could be seen.

“All right,” Brock cheerfully exclaimed, “back on track, and the whole gang's here. Me, you, Jacko here, and... all right, fuck. This bear's gotta have a name. Any stuffed animal that I risk cops and the wrath of the assholes at the airstrip for, and costs me an hour of my time and two extra rides over that godforsaken dirt road had better have a goddam name. So what is it, Soldier?”

“He doesn't have a name. Like me.”

“No fuck that, forget I said that before. You have a name – it's 'The Soldier.' That's a pretty cool fucking name, too. Let me tell you, most guys would do stupid shit you can't believe to earn themselves a nickname that has a 'the' in front of it. The Machine. The Shredder. The Situation. The Iceman. The Gravedigger. I could go on.”

“Come to think of it,” Jack added, “all of those names would probably be more appropriate for the Soldier than the shitheads that use them.”

“That's right!” Brock clapped the Soldier's shoulder. “See, you're the real shit, and your name's better than all of those. 'The Soldier.' That's humble, almost, like you're downplaying the fact that if there ever was a soldier on this earth, it would be you -”

What Brock said reminded Jack of something he'd seen on TV. “Like Plato's realm of perfect forms. You're the ideal soldier, the definition of the concept, and every other soldier is just an imitation.”

“Yeah, what he said.” Brock gave Jack an incredulous look and a shove. “Fucking nerd. Anyway, enough with the pep talk. It's time to name the bear. We can't have The Soldier and The Bear. That sounds like a bible parable or an eight-minute country song. Come on, just say the first name that comes to your mind.”

The Soldier only took a few seconds. “Bucky.”

Jack's ears burned and he truly couldn't believe what he had just heard.

Gently Brock asked, “What did you say?”

“Bucky. The bear's name will be Bucky.”

Jack heard the upholstery creak as Brock settled slowly into the back seat. 

Jack started to laugh. At first it was just giggling but then he let it go. There's a sort of glee you feel when you're right about a shitty prediction. It's a dark joy, but it's validating, and it's great to see someone who thought they were smarter than you look hilariously stupid, like Brock did now. He was sitting in the back and staring blankly at the seat in front of him like he'd just seen a ghost. In a way, he _had_ just seen a ghost.

“Brock,” Jack said, freely using a patronizing tone, “you okay back there?”

“Yeah.” Brock leaned forward again and cleared his throat. “Where did you get that name from?” he asked the Soldier.

“You told me to say the first name that came to mind. That was the first name.”

“Are you sure you want to name him that?” Brock asked. “Bucky is a nickname for a baby. Look at him. He's carrying a rifle. This bear is a man. You should give him a man's name.” 

Jack stared out the window and tried to control his laughter. He wondered if Brock recognized that this was entirely his fault. Or was it? Jack privately conceded that the Soldier had maybe gotten a glimpse of the bear's tag before Jack had torn it off.

“Steve, then. Steve is a man's name. The bear's name is Steve.” 

Nope, Jack thought. Brock and all his games had unlocked a door in the Soldier's mind that decades of brainwashing had tried to keep sealed. Jack threw his head back and gave in to full-belly laughter until he coughed. He took a deep breath and then heard the Soldier's voice in his head again, announcing the name 'Steve' with such total certainty. The laughter started all over again and Jack had to pinch the bridge of his nose to keep from crying. He wiped the wetness from his eyes in order to see Brock in the backseat, irritated and glowering.

“Laugh it up, dickhead.”

“What?”

Brock turned to the Soldier. “No, Steve ain't gonna work either. That's a nobody's name. Give him a name with balls, something regal. Something you can respect. Not _Steve_.”

The Soldier sighed. Jack could see he was getting annoyed with what must seem to him like a pointless game. He hadn't wanted to name the bear in the first place, and when he was made to, nothing he came up with was good enough.

“James.”

This time Jack was howling. He had to brace himself and thought he might piss right there in the Piece-of-Shit. It seemed impossible that the Soldier could score three times in a row. Jack could barely hear Brock grumbling his dissatisfaction over his own laughter, but he finally got enough breath in his lungs to defend the Soldier.

“No, Brock. You only get to veto two names. I know you want him to name the bear after you but too bad. It's final. The bear's name is James. Come on, let's drink to it.”

Alcohol was a great redirecting tool for Brock. They matched long drafts and christened the bear with bourbon. 

“ _James._ Definitely a regal and holy name,” Jack said.

He watched Brock shake his head and lay back, his eyes fluttering shut. He hoped the bastard fell asleep right before they got to the airstrip so he could have the pleasure of slapping his drunk ass awake.


	8. Chapter 8

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
January 6, 2014 **

Like a black miracle, the series of disasters that was the Canadian mission had seemed to bring no negative repercussions to Brock or Jack. The guys at the airstrip hadn't been thrilled about the state of the Lincoln, and the pilot had been waiting for over an hour, but people didn't usually complain in the presence of the Soldier. Brock had been a little depressed when he realized they had left the booze in the car right after take-off, but then he just went to sleep and left Jack in peace.

Over beers Brock and Jack had cleaned up their story so it didn't sound like a dark Keystone comedy when they had to tell it to Pierce. The latter seemed pleased that they had handled what might have been such a massive catastrophe on their own, but his eyes did narrow a little when Brock confessed to using the explosive rounds.

The holidays came and went and Jack didn't even think about the Soldier except for the times he would see James hanging out on Brock's couch, where he apparently lived now. Jack couldn't say if the Soldier had been sent on any more missions, or if he was even still awake. All anybody in Hydra ever talked about was Insight, which would make the Soldier pretty obsolete. Maybe Brock would ask if he could bring him home as a pet. Why not?

A few days into the new year, Jack and Brock were called into Pierce's office. This only happened for one reason – Pierce didn't just check in with his operatives to make sure they were happy with their life in Hydra. 

It was the explosive bullets. A ballistics expert in Phoenix had been following the cases they were used in and he was getting ready to file a report with Shield. 

“I need you guys to go out there and take care of it,” Pierce said, throwing them each a manila folder. “You'll leave Wednesday night, and be back within a week. That should be more than enough time, even considering the four days of driving you'll need.”

“Driving?” Brock asked, and Jack couldn't blame him for speaking out this time. “Why can't we just -”

“Our relationship with the technicians and pilots we normally use is a bit shaky right now,” Pierce said, and Jack wondered if this shaky relationship had anything to do with their Canadian adventure. “Don't worry, your expenses will all be paid and the real work will be done by the asset. All you two need to do is drive and handle. Think of it as a road trip with friends. Just don't take any pictures.”

Brock was pleased. Jack was not.

 

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
January 8-9, 2014 **

On Wednesday night Jack found himself again waiting in the underground garage, cleaning trash out of the Original Piece-of-Shit and warming it up while Brock retrieved the Soldier. James was keeping him company. Since the Soldier was already good and defrosted, and hopefully dressed, there would be no rub-downs or any other excuses for Brock to get distracted and handsy with him. Jack was glad when he saw the elevator doors open and Brock get out with - 

Jack did a double take. The man walking with Brock certainly _looked_ like the Soldier, but he was dressed in a faded gray t-shirt and loose jeans. The imposter casually got in the front seat and Brock threw some bags in the trunk before hopping in the back.

Jack took the driver's seat and looked at the man next to him. It was the Soldier, all right. He set James in his lap and strapped himself in with his companion.

“What the fuck is he wearing? Where's the Edward Scissorhands outfit?”

Brock was fluffing a pillow and getting ready to sleep through first stretch of the drive.

“It's in the trunk. I figured he doesn't need it while we're driving.”

“So... what? You changed him?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, you took off his clothes, and put some of your own clothes on him...”

_“Yeah!”_

Jack only sighed.

“ _What?_ Don't fucking start with that shit again, Rollins!”

“I didn't say a damn thing.”

Brock was asleep and snoring within minutes. He stayed that way for the next nine hours. Jack had always been jealous of the man's ability to sleep deeply and soundly in situations that most would find impossibly uncomfortable. He could sleep through pouring rain in the jungle, a sandstorm, or the arctic cold. Always well-rested, he was often fresh and sharp while his comrades were weary and sleep-deprived. Fucker.

The Soldier wasn't long behind him, but he slept like a doll. Sitting straight up with only his head back, his mouth closed and silent as the grave. He didn't even seem to be breathing.

That was the company Jack had for the next six hours until he found a gas station that was open. The Soldier woke up but Brock stayed as he was. Jack went inside to get an energy drink and some sunflower seeds. At the register he saw a bag of Funions. He bought them, too.

After filling the tank he got back in and threw the bag of Funions in the Soldier's lap. The Soldier crunched on them for the next hour, making the most of them while he watched the sun rise.

At around seven in the morning they pulled into a McDonald's. Without having to be told, the Soldier pulled on a hoodie to hide his left arm and his face.

“Wake him up,” were the first words Jack had said to the Soldier since he had been picked up. 

The Soldier stared back.

“Ball up your chip bag and throw it in his face.”

The Soldier kept staring.

“What are you worried about? Go ahead.”

He rolled the bag around in his hand and made a direct hit on Brock's nose before quickly turning around and looking straight out the windshield.

Brock groaned and sat up, yawning and wiping dried spit off his cheek. He picked up the wadded-up chip bag from where it had landed on the floor. “What the fuck?” he croaked. “Don't throw trash at me, you fucking prick.” Then he unfurled the bag. “Wait... who had Funions?”

The Soldier ignored him and began puzzling over menu options.

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
January 9, 2014 **

After his breakfast and coffee, Brock was fully refreshed and ready to take his turn behind the wheel. The Soldier, who had apparently been weened, got an egg mcmuffin that he ate by pinching small pieces off and chewing them until they were liquified or letting them dissolve in his mouth. This took him more than an hour, but it's not like he had anything better to do while he listened to Brock flap his gums. 

Jack tried in vain to sleep. First he couldn't get comfortable. He twisted his large body into every possible position but some part of him was always being crushed or cramped. Once he was somewhat comfortable, he had to listen to Brock talking to the Soldier about everything under the sun, like a kid trying to impress a girl. Thinking Jack was asleep, he told exaggerated war stories and tales of missions he had taken part in, making himself out to be a cold-blooded bad motherfucker. Then he started talking about his childhood, and the town he grew up in. Then the radio went on, and when he wasn't maniacally changing channels he was giving the Soldier a history lesson about rock music. The Soldier didn't say a word during any of this. 

Brock stopped at a gas station even though the tank was half-full and bought a bunch of snacks. Once they were back on the road, he rolled down the window for a cigarette. When the window was up again, the radio was back on as well as the music history lesson. Eventually Jack sat up, sure that he wasn't going to get any sleep and if he kept trying, he might end up strangling Brock.

“Hey, you sleep well?” Brock asked brightly.

Jack ignored his question. “Just... gimme one of those cigarettes.”

“It's always nice to say plea -”

“ _Brock_ \- gimme a fucking cigarette!”

He got the pack thrown in his face.

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
January 11, 2014 **

Gated communities were the worst. They were impossible to stake out until late at night and by then your target was sleeping so you couldn't learn shit about them. Even then, it was rare that you didn't eventually realize you were being watched by some paranoid insomniac that's about to call the cops. Sure, Jack realized he was exactly the sort of person shitheads like that are worried about, but he thought it was strange that it was always the assholes no one gives a shit about that think someone is out to get them.

At least this place didn't have a live guard, only a worthless fence that was easy to hack. Now they were sitting in a dark car on a dark street, watching a dark house. Jack wanted to go to sleep, but he was strung out on the energy drinks he had been gulping all day. After yesterday's sleepless nap he had stayed up, enjoying the view from the Original Piece-of-Shit as well as the opportunity to correct all of Brock's bombastic lies. He drove through the night again, with Sleeping Beauty beside him and Brock sawing logs in the back.

Friday was a repeat of Thursday; the radio, the unnecessary stops, the window going up and down, and of course, the one-way jabbering. Jack never guessed Brock had so much to talk about. Maybe he just never had an audience that didn't tell him to shut the fuck up after a few minutes. One way or another, Jack only got sparse, intermittent moments of slight unconsciousness that just made him feel more exhausted. 

He slammed two energy drinks before it was his turn to drive again, and then drank two more as they headed into Phoenix and went straight to the target's residence. Jack couldn't say why they went straight to the house, and he wasn't sure if it was because his team was made of idiots or if he just couldn't remember the reason. As he sat there, all Jack could think about was the shadows dancing on the edge of his peripheral and the way his eyes burned with visions of fire and snakes whenever he shut them for a few seconds. If he tried to focus on what Brock and the Soldier were saying, it started to sound like they were speaking a foreign language. He hadn't slept in over sixty-five hours.

Jack was watching the shadow of a mailbox in front of the Lincoln. After staring at it for a few minutes, it jumped into the darker shadow of a nearby tree. He blinked and the shadow was back beneath the mailbox where it ought to be. He was losing his mind.

“Is somebody gonna go in there and do this fucking thing, or what? Do I have to do it myself?” Jack blurted out over the very professional conversation that was going on in the back seat.

Brock and the Soldier both looked at Jack like he was as crazy as he felt.

“ _Are you fucking high?_ His entire family is asleep in there. You wanna go on a rampage? Have us being chased by fucking helicopters and news cameras and shit? Just sit tight! Take a nap or something!”

Jack understood the obvious wisdom here, but it seemed physically impossible to sit in a car listening to the Soldier and Brock pore over blueprints and discuss pointless variations of a straightforward plan in what sounded to him like Farsi for more than another five minutes. 

“When is this going to be over with?” Jack asked like an impetuous child. “What are we waiting for?”

There was another long silence that made Jack feel very self-conscious.

“Are you sure you didn't fall and hit your fucking head in the truck stop john?” Brock asked, sounding more disgusted than necessary. Maybe he was reveling in the fact that for once, he wasn't the impatient dick that had no idea what was going on. “Seven. _Fucking seven o' clock._ When the bitch takes the rug rats to school, the Soldier's gonna break in.”

That was six hours away. Six hours of torture. 

“In broad daylight so the neighborhood can see him?” Jack was only pretending that strategy was his real issue here. “So we can make sure the target's good and awake enough to scream or fight or get on his phone?”

“ _Hey_ \- this was your fucking plan, asshole! Maybe you don't remember because you've obviously suffered some kind of brain trauma. You wanted to minimize body count. If he goes in there now, the bitch dies, too. Is that what you want?”

Honestly Jack was having a hard time caring about a woman he'd never met before. “Well... no, but -”

“ _Okay,_ then. Shut the fuck up and take a nap! That's an order.”

There was nothing to do but comply. Jack laid his head back and closed his eyes. The fire and snakes faded away after a few minutes and he tried to imagine that he was far away from the filthy Lincoln and doing something relaxing: floating in a tube down the Pearl River, maybe... or sleeping in a hammock on a spring day... or _fuck,_ just sitting on his couch with a cold beer – anything but this shit. 

His mind continued to search for peaceful memories. As a child he had a kiddie pool that he loved. He would spend whole afternoons trying to float as many leaves as possible on the surface until they surrounded him, fitting together like Tetris blocks. It was a challenge to fill the surface completely before the leaves would sink. When he accomplished this feat it gave him the greatest satisfaction, even though it never lasted more than a moment. He was there again, in his parents' backyard, smelling his father's freshly-cut lawn and his mother's cooking, placing one leaf after another carefully in the pool from a pile he had gathered. As they filled the pool, only tiny slivers of sunshine between the leaf-islands reflected back in his eyes. He used to pretend that every leaf was inhabited by a miniature race of people, and when a leaf sank beneath the water, zig-zagging its way to the bottom of the pool, an entire civilization went with it. But the apocalypse hadn't arrived yet; he was still filling the surface and every leaf had managed to stay afloat. There was only one empty space by the edge, and one leaf left that would fit perfectly. He reached for it and - 

The trunk slammed and Jack's eyes shot open. He was back in the Original Piece-of-Shit and the clock read 2:13. He had been asleep for a little over an hour. Brock and the Soldier startled him when they threw the doors open and jumped in.

“Fuck,” Jack croaked, groggy and disoriented, “where did you guys go?”

“Jesus Christ, Jack...” Brock said, shaking his head and chuckling. “Just drive.”

He looked across the street at the still dark and peaceful-looking house they had been watching. “What about the -”

“It's _done_! Isn't that what you wanted, cranky-ass? We took your advice and got it over with.”

“But... what about the wife and the kids and all that shit -”

“The kids are hopefully still asleep, and the wife, well... she's accompanying her husband to wherever people go when you put a bullet in their face.”

Jack sat up and, suddenly wide awake. He stared at the house across the street for some clue as to the the truth of Brock's words, as if the exterior should have undergone a change that meant there were dead people within. _“Fuck! Brock – you killed the -”_

“Would you fucking drive?” 

Jack turned the ignition and watched the Soldier buckle himself in with James. As the Lincoln crept away, Jack remembered that both the Soldier and Brock had gotten in the car while he was waking up.

“Brock, did you go with him into the house? Why?”

“What? Why would I go in there with him? You think he can't handle two fuckers sleeping in their beds?”

Jack could feel the Soldier glaring in the seat next to him.

“What were you doing out of the car, then?”

“Not that you're in a position to question my actions, _Agent Rollins_ , but I was getting a bottle of single-malt out of the trunk.”

“What?” Jack perked up, “you're fucking kidding me, right?”

“Yes,” Brock teased, “I'm kidding you. And this -” here he shook the bottle over the front seat, “is a figment of your concussed imagination.”

“Give me that!”

Jack made a for it, but Brock snatched it away.

“No fucking way. You're already loopy and I'm not opening this until you get us on the freeway.”

Brock spent the next few minutes mocking Jack for his sleep-deprivation episode (which was completely his fault) and complaining that it was taking too long to get to the freeway. Jack was simply backtracking the way they had come, but Brock had to bring up his navigation app so his phone's robot voice could join in on the mockery, telling him to make a u-turn every sixteen seconds. Brock kept saying that he was dying for a drink but wouldn't open the the bottle until they were on the freeway, as if drinking on the surface streets was bad juju that would bring the wrath of the traffic stop gods. Why this wasn't a problem in Canada probably had something to do with Brock's unwavering drunkenness from the moment he stepped in the cabin until the moment he stepped on the plane. Jack guessed that no god could impede the force of a man's will once his blood alcohol level had reached a certain percentage.

As Jack sped up the on-ramp, he could hear the clasps snapping on the bottle as Brock made some idiotic cowboy noises. A few seconds later, after a grunt and a deep exhalation, sourness filled the air.

Jack was eager for something to smooth the jagged edges of his consciousness. He reached behind the seat. “Let me see that.”

“Nope,” Bock answered, “you're driving.”

“You said, when we got on the freeway -”

“I said I'd open it, I didn't say you could have _shit_.”

Jack extended his arm further and seethed, “Brock, _gimme the fuckin bottle!_ ”

Brock giggled and held it out of reach.

Jack brought his hand back to the wheel. An off-ramp was just ahead of them and he considered taking it so he could find a nice quiet spot to wrestle and maybe bloody Brock a little bit until he got what he wanted, but, being as interested as everyone else was to get out of Phoenix, he decided to test his rapport with the Soldier instead.

He looked at the man sitting next to him, straight-backed and with a teddy bear strapped down in his lap. Jack kept glancing at him until he made eye contact, then, mimicking Pierce's calm but forceful tone, he said, “Get that bottle away from him.”

The Soldier seemed uncertain at first; he might have thought this was some sort of silly game he was being forced into again. He looked back at Brock, who laughed and cutely warned, “Don't even think about it, bro.”

He looked again to Jack, and this time Jack was deadly serious. “Get. That bottle. Away from him. _Now._ ”

First the Soldier respectfully extended his metal arm over the back seat just as Jack had, giving Brock the chance to surrender with dignity. 

Brock laughed again. “Not happening,” he said, and as the Soldier undid his seat belt and set James aside he was still laughing. “I smell mutiny!” then, “Hey!” as the Soldier climbed half-way over the seat to perform his mission.

Jack couldn't be sure what was happening, (since he was a responsible driver who kept his eyes on the road at all times) but there was definitely a scuffle and Jack had to sidle up to the window so the Soldier had plenty of room to struggle with Brock. Finally he heard a loud, _”Ow, fuck!”_ and the Soldier dropped back into his seat with the bottle in his hands. He passed it to Jack.

It was the best scotch he'd ever tasted; yeah it was nice shit, but the triumph made it sweeter. He drank as much as he could stand and passed it back to the Soldier, hoping he knew what to do with it. He did. He turned the thing upside down in his mouth to the music of Brock bitching about how expensive it was. The Soldier left about two inches at the bottom for Brock, which he passed back politely before buckling himself back in with James.

“Assholes,” Brock grumbled, defeated and pouting with the dregs of his pillaged scotch.


	9. Chapter 9

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
January 11, 2014 **

For reasons that weren't immediately clear, Brock decided not to be a pain in the ass about the scotch thing. He drank what was left in the bottle and passed out.

At half-past six, they stopped in New Mexico for gas and a stretch. Jack hadn't stood up in over twelve hours. As soon as they pulled up to the pump, Brock lifted his head, noted his surroundings, and walked into the minimart without saying a word to anyone. When he reappeared, he was carrying two heavy plastic bags that clanked loudly on his way back to the Lincoln. 

“Fine morning for Wild Turkey and Coke, wouldn't you say?” Before dipping into the Lincoln, Brock flashed a wide, toothy smile that seemed to say, _since you didn't let me get a buzz on good liquor late at night, you're going to deal with me getting shit-faced early in the morning._ So what had seemed like magnanimity had really been Brock biding his time until he could have his revenge. Jack wondered at Brock's willingness to risk his health, happiness, and self-control just to make his comrade miserable.

When Jack strapped himself back into the driver's seat, Brock was already plying the Soldier with his toxic cocktail. He supposed this was meant to annoy him, but Jack figured that the more the Soldier drank, the less there would be for Brock. (This was before Jack realized that Brock had purchased four handles of liquor, enough for a fucking wedding feast.)

Jack knew Brock wanted him to ask for a drink, so of course he didn't. Honestly, he had no desire for one. He had grown up with his father and knew that no good comes from even measured amounts of Wild Turkey. He had never seen what happens to a man who partakes of its evils at seven a.m., but he was sure it wasn't going to be pretty. 

The most obvious implication of Brock getting drunk was that Jack would be driving through the day. Sure, Brock would say he could drive, but he knew Jack wouldn't let him. _Two could play this game_ , Jack thought, planning to stop over in the Texas panhandle at a motel and treat himself to sixteen hours of sleep, free from Brock's scratchy voice and rancid breath. Brock might bitch about wanting to get home, but he would have to kill Jack to get the keys away from him. 

Jack was speeding down the highway, eager for the crisp white sheets and miniature bars of soap that were awaiting him in Amarillo. Brock, seemingly not satisfied to stink up the car from the back, was again leaning over the seat, fucking with the radio.

“Look around, bro,” Jack said once Brock had made it all the way around the dial twice, “we're in the middle of fucking nowhere. You won't find anything.”

“Bullshit. These truckers out here must have something to listen to.”

“Yeah. It's called CB radio. They use it to bitch about cops and tell each other dick jokes. Now would you sit back?” Jack allowed his elbow to further compel the nuisance down on his ass.

Jack rolled down the window to clear out the smell of Brock as the latter mixed himself another drink. It was too bad that Coke was an ingredient in this cocktail, otherwise Jack would let himself hope that Brock might drink himself to sleep. Alas, the prick was almost as caffeinated as he was drunk.

The Soldier, on the other hand, who had imbibed even more than Brock, remained Jack's ideal passenger. He sat quietly and studied the landscape, breathing through his nose so that if his mouth had become as foul a cesspit as Brock's had, at least Jack wasn't experiencing it.

Brock had made a few attempts to start conversation, and all of them had fallen flat. He tried to talk about sports teams and TV shows neither Jack nor the Soldier gave a shit about or had even heard of, and with Jack awake and listening he wasn't even going to try with his self-aggrandizing tales of bravery. Jack liked seeing this part of Brock's plot backfire – being a shit wasn't very fun when you were amped out and drunk with nothing to do and no one wants to talk to you.

“I'm hungry,” Brock announced as they passed a sign that promised them McDonald's fifty miles ahead. The desert surrounded them.

“Okay,” Jack said, “tell me that again in fifty miles when it's not completely fucking pointless.”

Brock somehow managed to make himself go to sleep ten minutes later, and when the highway met up with the one-exit town that centered around the foretold McDonald's, Brock kept the Lincoln plowing straight ahead. As they passed the exit, the Soldier turned his face to the driver, who silently tapped a finger to his lips. The Soldier's lips barely curled as he turned his face back out the window to soak up more of the view.

A few minutes later Jack decided to add insult to injury - “Soldier,” he whispered, “see what else he's got in those bags back there.”

The Soldier quickly unharnessed himself and handed James to the driver before he flipped around on his knees to investigate. “Four large bottles of alcohol, and three small ones of the cola drink,” he reported, his speaking voice softer than a whisper.

_“Four?”_ Jack mouthed, his face twisting in disbelief. 

The Soldier nodded.

“Well, grab the best one and bring it up here.”

Jack wasn't sure how the Soldier would interpret his request for 'the best one,' but it didn't take him more than a second to reach down and grab a bottle of Jim Beam, so he'd clearly learned something about drinking during his time with Brock.

“Good choice,” Jack chuckled. He held out an empty soft drink cup from god-knows-when and had the Soldier fill it halfway. The Soldier didn't need to be told that he was welcome to it as well, and they sipped their drinks in peace for a few blessed hours.

Brock would awaken again though, unfortunately, and when he did the sun was high in the sky. It didn't take him long to realize that McDonald's had long been left in the dust. 

“What the fuck?” Brock shouted. “I thought I said I was hungry.”

“I thought so, too,” Jack brightly agreed. “I also thought I told you to bring it up again when something could be done about it. I think the time has come and gone when something could be done about it, and I think you didn't say anything. I think your choice of reopening the issue now is strange, because I think we're surrounded by empty nothingness, where I think no food -”

_”All right!”_ Brock growled, then began muttering to himself while Jack listened to bottles unscrewing, Coke bottles hissing, and bags rustling. “Hey, where's my Beam?”

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
January 11-12, 2014 **

Jack got off on the first exit in Amarillo, and pulled into the first motel he saw.

“Oh, I guess we're getting a room,” was Brock's blithe and unexpected response.

“ _Rooms._ Plural. I need some privacy,” Jack specified.

“Don't worry,” Brock retorted, scooting over to the door and opening it, “watching you jerk off isn't on my bucket list.”

Brock went into the office and returned with two keys. “Here,” he said, throwing one to Brock, “you're right next door to us, so in case you get scared...”

“Wait, _us_?”

“Yeah, me and the Soldier.”

“You guys are sharing a room...”

“Yeah,” Brock answered, bending over to speak directly into the window, which was probably meant to be intimidating. “I got you a single, because you need your alone time, and I got a double for him and me.” 

Jack stared at him. He realized that this had all been Brock's plan from the beginning. Drinking all day and forcing Jack to be exhausted, knowing Jack would want to stay overnight in a motel, and knowing he wouldn't even have to _suggest_ it – it was brilliant, that's what it was. The brilliant, sick, conniving fuck.

Jack looked over at the Soldier, whose face was as blank and placid as ever. Then he turned back to Brock. In a low and steady voice, he said, “Don't you think he can have his own room?”

Brock rolled his jaw like he was getting ready to fight. “We're handlers. We're here to handle him. Someone needs to keep an eye on him, and you want to be alone, so it's on me. Now if you want to continue this discussion, I'm going to ask you to step out of the fucking car.”

Jack ignored him and turned to the Soldier again. “Are you okay with this? Don't you want your own room? Tell this fucker to go back in there and get you your own room.”

The little traitor just shrugged. The little shit. He was happy to defy and antagonize Brock when it suited him – calling him incompetent, naming the bear against his wishes, throwing trash at him, and stealing his booze – _twice_ – but when it came to his own chastity, he didn't give a fuck.

Jack threw his hands up. “All right, _fuck_. Just, forget it. Fuck it. Fuck you both.”

Brock got his head out of the window before Jack could tear it off as he reversed. Maybe he'd have better luck next time. The Lincoln screeched as he blasted it across the parking lot and into a space in front of his room. He got out, slammed the door, got his shit out of the trunk, slammed that, and stomped into his room, slamming the door behind him. He crashed onto the bed, moaned over the pleasure of being fully horizontal, and fell asleep within minutes.

The room was pitch black when he awoke. The darkness would have granted him a welcome feeling of isolation if not for the sounds of life all around him - TVs blasting, voices shouting, unknown things banging, doors slamming. As he continued listening to the activity, he began to realize it was all coming from a single place – the room next door. 

He got up and walked out of his room like a zombie, yawning and staggering. He knocked lazily on Brock's door, then realized he wouldn't hear it with all the shit going on in there. He turned the handle, found the room unlocked, and let the door drift open.

It stank like the bastard son of a locker room and a dive bar. Brock was in the middle of the room, shirtless, yelling over the TV (which was on full-blast) with a plastic cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The Soldier was on the bed, also half-naked, listening to Brock but turning boredly to Jack when he saw him standing in the door. He was also holding a plastic cup, and a cigarette, too. It looked as though they had been using the carpet as an ashtray, and Brock must have turned his travel bag inside out and flung its contents all over the room because his shit was everywhere – clothes, bathroom supplies, paperwork, even weapons. Every liquor bottle was opened and half-drained. Furniture was in weird places, as if a couple of six-year-olds had been designing a hopping course. 

For some reason, the thing that drew most of Jack's attention was the cigarette the Soldier was casually puffing on like he had been doing it all his life. Considering the era he had come from, the man probably started smoking when he was nine, but still...

“What the fuck is he doing with a cigarette?” Jack asked, but the TV drowned him out.

The Soldier, who was clearly enjoying his cigarette, nodded over to Jack, bringing Brock's attention to him for the first time since he had been standing there.

“Oh, hey! What's up?” Brock lifted his motel water cup filled with... who knows, something that wasn't water.

“I said, WHAT'S HE DOING WITH A CIGARETTE?” Jack yelled.

Brock finally turned the TV down halfway. “Oh, I don't know, he wanted one.”

“So?” Jack walked over to the Soldier and pulled the thing from between his lips, dropped it on the floor, and stubbed it out with his calloused heel. The Soldier exhaled his last drag and said nothing.

“You two wrap up this fucking high school hotel party and get some sleep. We have a long drive tomorrow and I'm not doing it all myself.” Jack walked over to the TV and hit the off button. “And take a shower, both of you. It stinks in here.” He considered clarifying that they should take _separate_ showers but knew that that would be going too far, so he added, “The walls are thin, so keep it down.” He hoped Brock would stay decent if he thought Jack could hear all the goings-on in their room. _Hoped,_ anyway.

Jack sauntered back to his room and got in the shower himself. The hot water was like heaven, but his ecstasy was spoiled by the sound of the TV going on again next door and Brock's muffled shouting. The walls were paper-thin indeed, if he could hear all that through the shower and the roaring bathroom fan. Jack had only seen two other cars in the parking lot, so he didn't have to worry about them bringing attention to themselves. Only Jack would have to suffer the sounds of Brock's stupidity. 

Jack wondered why the Soldier didn't put a stop to it – he had to know that all of this was highly inappropriate and even dangerous. It's like he didn't care if something happened that put the entire organization in jeopardy of exposure; he did his thing, he did it right, and if it worked out, great, if it didn't, _fuck it._ The teddy bear double-back thing probably wasn't about evidence at all, he had just wanted to fuck around with the Lincoln and see if he could get a rise out of his handlers. Jack felt the same unease about the Russian sniper story. The Soldier may not know exactly who he was, but he had to know that he was _not_ a volunteer. And if Hydra went to shit tomorrow, everyone would be fucked except for him; a prisoner of war or a hostage is _exactly_ what he would be considered, especially if Rogers got involved, which he undoubtedly would. So why should the Soldier care if missions succeeded or failed?

One thing was for sure – that fucker needed a good, strong wipe. Something to clear away all the willfulness, cigarettes, teddy bears, liquor, and homo-eroticism that had been gathering in his head over the past few months. Jack was going to make that _abundantly_ clear to Pierce when they got back to DC, even if it meant revealing some of Brock's indiscretions. With Insight going live, maybe it was just time to decommission the son of a bitch. There had been some good times, yeah, but if it came down to it, Jack would retire the fucker himself. In a heartbeat.

He stepped out of the shower and turned the fan off. The party next door was still going, though not so raucously he couldn't sleep through it. He could hear Brock, telling stories again, and imagined the Soldier sitting there, sucking on a cigarette, his eyes wandering amongst Brock's shit as he looked for tools he could use to hot-wire the Lincoln. At least that's what Jack would be doing. But again, he might be giving the Soldier too much credit.

Jack collapsed on the bed and closed his eyes, worried that the Soldier might not be there in the morning. He decided to open the blinds and crack the window so he could hear anything going on in the car. If he left on foot, that would still be a shitstorm, but at least they wouldn't be stranded. Jack wondered what Pierce would say, and what punishment would be worse – Pierce killing him, or Pierce sending him with Brock on some endless Arthurian quest to recover the little cocksucker. Before falling asleep, he decided he would beg for death.

When he woke up in darkness, his first thought was to figure out _why_ he had woken up. The clock read 3:41. He jumped out of bed and ran to the window, pushing the blinds aside to see the Lincoln sitting cold and still. He turned back to the inside of the room and stood there listening, thinking, wondering if he was being paranoid. _Did_ something wake him up, or did he just wake up because, you know, people wake up sometimes. 

He started padding back to the bed but stopped short when he heard a soft thud next door. That's all it was, a little bump in the night, but there was something furtive about it, something sinister that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

He stood motionless over the bed, waiting to hear it again. He did. Three times, each a touch louder than the last, and a gasp riding over them, building and piquant at the last like a crack in reverse.

Such an undeniably human sound caught him off guard, and stung him, though he couldn't say why. He approached the wall slowly and brought his face an inch from the surface, so close he could feel the warmth of his breath blowing into his mouth. It disgusted him, sullied by the wall and whatever was on the other side of it. He turned to breathe into the open space, bringing his ear even closer to the tainted wall.

There was a choked utterance alongside humming whispers, low and smooth like purring. He thought he could hear linen rustling, but that was impossible; no wall could be that thin. Then, more whispers, and something sharp - a _wet_ sound. He pressed his ear against the wall. His eyes had nothing to look at but they were wide open and burned when he remembered to blink. 

A groaning and creaking mattress seemed to accommodate activity more deliberate than that of shifting, sleeping bodies. He could also hear more of the staccato peaks of wet kisses. _Kisses._ Any living human over the age of twelve could identify that sound, as obnoxious and provocative as it is. 

He lifted his ear a few inches from the wall and looked at it, as if staring at it long and close enough would make it invisible. But he didn't need that to picture what was taking place on the other side.

Fragments came first. Pushing, pulling, grasping, biting. Red and purple marks from desperate fingers and teeth. Legs and arms being manipulated and arranged for convenience. Every sound was assigned to the different but common things people do when they decide to rut in and out of each other. Finally he had no choice but to put it all together. _Fucking._ They were fucking over there, right next door to him, grinding their fluids into each other and soaking the bed. He could almost taste the salt in their sweat.

He backed away from the wall, still listening as they found a rhythm. The rocking mattress set the bed-post tapping only lightly against the wall. He could sense the charged restraint in those timid little knocks. They were holding back, trying to be as quiet as their excitement would allow. While it should have been obvious that they would do this, it pissed Jack off that they thought they were getting away with it. _And that probably only makes it better,_ he bitterly realized. A reason to prolong the pleasure and a shared secret they could cherish and amuse themselves with. Would the Soldier try to hang on to the memory of being spread open and stretched wide when they tied him and down and bleached the inside of his skull? Jack had never understood why men let themselves be used like that, nor women either. Pricks to him were the bane of human existence, and sex was nothing more than an invasion of personal privacy. 

Nausea had been stirring in his gut since he heard the first gasp, but now that his suspicions had been confirmed, he felt downright sick. Nothing bothered him more than being made a fool. He couldn't imagine crawling back beneath the covers and turning a deaf ear to the shit next door. Or sitting in the Lincoln for the next day or so, pretending not to notice their afterglow or their lingering looks at one another.

The urgency of the tapping on the wall was rising in tandem with Jack's temper. He had two choices, two traumas to choose from that he would have to live with for the rest of his life – that of knowing what it _sounds_ like when Brock comes in another man's ass, or that of knowing what Brock _looks_ like when he does the same thing. While the second option came at the price of a deeper and much more indelible stain, it also granted him the satisfaction of shitting all over Brock's orgasm.

Filled with a sense of purpose, Jack marched out of his room and stood in front of Brock's door in his boxer briefs. He let the cold night air wash over him, wondering if the consequences of this action were more than he was appreciating. Jack decided he didn't care push-kicked the door, satisfied by the crunching sound of wood splintering as the bolt tore through the frame as well as the hollow bang when it struck the wall.

He flipped the light switch in time to see Brock scurrying out of bed, naked and erect.

_“What the fuck?”_ Brock shouted.

There was something so offensive about the way Brock's wet cock was pointing at him that Jack couldn't stand it long enough to answer him. He crossed the room and punched Brock three times in the face. The last punch broke his nose dropped him backwards on the empty bed. While Brock gurgled and held his nose, Jack turned him over and socked him a few times in the kidneys for good measure. Then he remembered the Soldier. Wide-eyed and wrapped in a sheet, he looked up at Jack in terror.

“Get up!” Jack barked, hauling him out of the bed by his metal arm. “Go, _out_!” Jack pushed him towards the open door, then shoved him out of Brock's room and into his own. 

There was only one bed and Jack wasn't going to share it with a naked man. He took a spare pair of boxer briefs and t-shirt and flung them at the Soldier. “Get yourself dressed and in bed.”

Jack laid himself along the edge of his side and turned his back to the unwanted guest. He could hear the sink turn on in Brock's room and guessed the fucker was probably rinsing blood off his face. 

When the Soldier joined him in bed, Jack didn't even look at him. He switched off the light and continued listening to Brock for a few minutes. The sink shut off and Brock started fucking with the door, which probably wouldn't stay closed. There was some heavy shuffling and dragging sounds when Brock must have moved some furniture in front of it. Then mattress springs bounced as he threw himself back in bed. 

**Period of Operation: 2013-2014 (cont.)  
January 12, 2014 **

The next morning was a little awkward. When the alarm went off, Jack ordered the Soldier into the shower and gave him some clothes. Then he sent him next door to see if Brock was still alive. Jack's concern was not exaggerated. That Brock had not even attempted a revenge attack was alarmingly uncharacteristic.

After Jack's own shower, he found the Soldier sitting on the bed watching a news piece about the murder in Phoenix. For Jack, that had been years ago. “So how is he?”

The Soldier pointed at the TV, confused.

“No, not the dead guy - _Brock_.”

“He's still living,” the Soldier assured.

“Good,” Jack said, but now that that worry could be laid to rest, he considered other potential issues. “But he's fucked up, though, isn't he? Is he? I bet he's fucked up and pissed. Did he say he was pissed? Did he say anything about killing me? Was he even up?”

The Soldier waited for the onslaught of questions to end then answered, “He was awake, and his injuries are very observable.”

 

It was only nine-thirty, but all the other guests had gone and the Lincoln was the only car left in the lot. Jack started the engine and decided to give Brock five minutes. After ten minutes, he honked. After fifteen minutes he laid on the horn again and sent the Soldier to go find him, telling him not to return without him.

“And don't forget James,” Jack shouted after him, “if you think leaving him in the cabin would have been bad, you can't even imagine what kind of ideas people would get about finding him in the middle of a wrecked motel room that stinks like sex.”

The Soldier pushed himself inside Brock's room and walked out a minute later with James. He got in the car, set James up, and settled in.

“Did you forget something?” Jack asked.

“He's coming.” 

Right on cue, Brock stumbled out of his room, limping on his way to the trunk and grimacing at the bright morning. Sunglasses hid much of his face. After slamming the trunk he tumbled into the back seat, groaning as he pulled his legs inside. 

“How do you feel?” Jack asked cautiously.

“ _Shit_...” Brock pulled off the glasses. “Look at me, how do you _think_ I feel?”

His eyes were raccooned and swollen, his nose bruised and noticeably crooked.

“Jesus, Brock,” Jack said, his voice heavy with remorse, “I -”

“The fucking toilet! Can you believe it? After all these years, a fucking toilet does this to me!” Brock pointed at his thrashed face and began laughing. “Our boy says I pissed all over the floor and then slipped in it. I don't remember _anything_.”

Jack looked beside him and caught the Soldier's blank look. A true professional.

Brock gingerly replaced his sunglasses. “Let's get something to eat so I can take some of this oxycontin I found in the first aid kit. My face is killing me.” Brock unscrewed a bottle and drank something that stank up the car. “I gotta slow down on the sauce, too,” he said, coughing. “My kidneys hurt like a bitch this morning. Like someone punched the shit out of them. _Fuck._ ”


End file.
